


Dear Hearts and Gentle People

by hello_imasalesman



Series: Dear Hearts and Gentle People [1]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 3
Genre: M/M, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-20
Updated: 2015-11-03
Packaged: 2018-04-16 05:44:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 20
Words: 52,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4613412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hello_imasalesman/pseuds/hello_imasalesman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Looking up at the Anchorage Memorial, the Lone Wanderer says with startling clarity: “You were a soldier.”<br/>“Yes.” Charon's mouth presses together in a thin line and he mutters, “Not in the way you’re thinking of.”<br/>Vaultie wraps his arms around himself, grasping his elbows. The silence stretches on before he quietly, quietly admits, “Me too. I think.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

 

> I love those dear hearts and gentle people  
>  Who live in my home town.  
>  Because those dear hearts and gentle people  
>  Will never ever let you down.

                   - _Bing Crosby_

* * *

 

Charon realizes who he’s the contractually obligated employee of after they leave Underworld a week later. Three Dog doesn’t ever describe the physical aspects of the Last, Best Hope for Humanity, but that may be because he's incredibly unremarkable. He would have never pegged him as the hero type, but Vaultie gets this weird smile on his face as the DJ talks about how the Lone Wanderer had left Underworld not too long ago and aided the Brotherhood of Steel in clearing out the mutants camped out in the foxholes around the Washington Monument. Sitting around the small radio of his pipboy in a subway train car they’ve temporary reinforced for the night, he’s humming along to the tone of the DJ’s sing-song voice.

_“Him and his new stalwart ghoul manservant really turned the tide of the fight. Those super mutants will probably be back soon, but if we’re lucky, the Brotherhood will send reinforcements and finally secure that area. Nice going, 101!”_

The kid bought him from Ahzrukhal; even Charon knew he was overpaying, but despite arriving to the ghoul sanctuary in armor that turned heads he was a stuttering, nervous mess and couldn’t barter to save his life. Startlingly youthful, soft and scar-free. He didn’t kill anyone for him. Vaultie didn’t balk, just owlishly blinked back at him; Ahzrukhal’s tongue darted between his non-existent lips, and he rumbled out a “Dear boy, say something to Uncle Ahzrukhal—or you can pay…” when finally the silence became too much.

He didn’t feel bad—didn’t even know the kid—when some of the spray back of Azruhkal’s blood got onto his vault suit, but before Charon could even notice (if he noticed such trivial things) he was babbling how it was no big deal, that some Borax and he would just, just, uhm, take some of Ahzrukhal’s spit, don’t mind me, it really works well on blood stains, it’s not a big deal. He had stuffed the contract into his pockets like he was almost ashamed of it, and the strange noise of the paper being crushed so haphazardly made Charon’s fingers twitch.

In the beginning, he is not sure why he is needed. The Lone Wanderer was already a well-seasoned gunman by the time Charon comes around, well beyond his years. He had bouts of long-winded babbling and even longer stretches of complete and utter silence. He never commanded, like past employers, unless they were on the field in the thick of things, and then he commanded like an army general so eerily well that it made the back of Charon’s eyeballs burn and his vision almost go white with how easily he slipped back into the roll.

He never asks how or why, but he’s around when others do: “I practiced a lot in the vault,” Vaultie offers to Willow when she lets out a low whistle of appreciation at the display he’s putting on. Bracing his rifle against the ledge of the metro’s wall, they took potshots at supermutants whose craniums peaked above the trenches. “I got a BB gun for my tenth birthday and never let it go.”

She snorts, shading her eyes against the setting sun to get a better look at the green heads popping like melons under Vaultie’s accurate shot. “I didn’t know the vaults were so fancy even their radroach poppers had scopes.”

Vaultie’s smile is strange. He pulls away from his position to glance uneasily at her. “Y-yeah.”

Charon makes a noise in the back of his throat, not even bothering to look up from the pistols he has deconstructed and cleaned on the rolled out sheet in front of him. He knows he is not a charmer himself, but the kid’s so uncharismatic it almost seems purposeful: he could have gotten away with the white lie easily enough with his face straight ahead towards the bunkers. Now the anxious smile and the pregnant pause and the shifting eyes are even making Willow flinch.

“That’s fine, tourist.” She mutters quickly, in an effort to pacify him, or at least get him to turn back to the mall. It works; he laughs, and it dies off in his throat before he presses his beet-red face to the scope. Charon snorts, just an exhale from the slits of his nose. Willow exchanges a look with him, but his milky blue eyes are impassive.

\--

His favorite songs are “Crazy He Calls Me,” and “Civilization”. He is obsessed with the time before the war. Anything that alludes to the comforts of a Vault-Tec approved American home promptly finds its way into Vaultie’s knapsack, or more commonly, Charon’s. He loves sugar bombs cereal and once paid a trader 1,000 caps just to taste the strange, sticky sweet bottle of Sunset Sarsaparilla he had brought from far west.

“Hey, Charon…” The Lone Wanderer’s voice ventures one night, just the two of them encamped in a small cave they’ve cleared out of ants. The radio plays quietly next to him as the ghoul cracks open a second can of beans for them to eat. “What… what was it like? Before the war? Just like the Vault books say?”

“I do not know. I have never read the Vault books.” Charon answers, robotically, his eyes downward.

Generally, when they talk, it’s little give, and mostly take. Vaultie understands the concept of the contract, but only in vague terms. Some things Charon does unquestioningly; Vaultie knows violence invalidates it, but when asked, _what’s your definition of violence? Can words be violent? What about gestures? How violent--?_ And the look Charon leveled at him when he witheringly replied, “Violence that could potentially be terminal to myself or you.” Silenced him quickly. He’s his employer, sure, but he’s no Ahzrukhal. (Charon is thankful for that, if he could feel an emotion as tender as ‘thankful’ anymore.)

“What did you do before the war?”

Charon bites his tongue. He nearly draws blood before his body forces him to answer: “I was a soldier.”

He doesn’t look up to see his employer’s reaction. All he hears is the sound of his spoon hitting the tin of the can. They’re quiet for the rest of the night; this isn’t abnormal for them. The Lone Wanderer doesn’t ask again.

\--

Ears have shells on them for a reason. They help funnel the sound into the canal; Charon hasn’t had any semblance of ears in years, and yet even he can hear the muffled sobs Vaultie’s trying to subdue with a pillow. He sometimes screams in his sleep. He says the word “father”, sometimes. Jonas and Benji and Amata and Butch are names mumbled during sweat-drenched fever dreams. Charon never asks.

\--

The suit he wears is something that makes a corner of Charon’s brain itch, familiar. But, after being alive for so long, everything is dully familiar. It’s body hugging, sleek black and orange accents, with nodules and wires seamlessly integrated into it. The fabric is something else entirely, something pre-war. It dirties, but doesn’t stain. He arrived in it, and only seemed to be coaxed out of it after having spent a week plus in Underworld; without it, he was nearly an entirely different person. Meek, unsure. When they left Underworld for the first time, the bumbling boy left the room and came back something else entirely, the orange visor impassive, his sniper rifle strapped to his back.

They travel together, uneasily. Charon hasn’t been in the thick of fire for a while, but he slots back into the role well enough. His employer is a different matter; the kid is not used to traveling in a pair, and he does not seemed to be used to traveling with someone else. The first time his employer crouches and disappears, Charon’s gut clenches.

“Sorry,” A voice says, somewhere to his left. Charon’s eyes are wide as he turns, carefully. There’s a knock of knuckles on the ground that draw his gaze immediately. “It’s the suit.”

Charon glares. And then his eye catches the corner of something—a faint outline, shimmering. It moves as the rapping of knuckles on the metal platform they’re standing on grow closer.

His eyebrows knit together. “Stealth boy?”

“Chinese. Crimson Dragoon.” A pause, “ _Hei gui,_ ” comes the reply, in text-book proper Mandarin. Charon turns away. This is not the worst curveball an employer has thrown at him. He can manage with an invisible one. In a way, it’s preferable; being the only one visible, his entire designation as protector is even easier. They only aim for him. Any thought that he may accidentally shoot him is unwarranted; it doesn’t take long for Charon to be able to catch the tell-tale shimmer of the cloak in all but the lowest of lights. And when his gun trains, accidentally, on his form, something scratches at the base of his brain, like a panicked rat. He nearly trips over him a few times. Vaultie’s nervous laughter is his only reply.

On their way out of the city, Vaultie makes small, strange chatter about how lovely the sky is, or asks awkward questions that Charon never answers with other than a frown. He collects useless things, like metro tickets, and tucks them almost reverently into the hands of passing protectrons as he sneaks behind them to shut them down for maintenance. He _maintains_ the metro protectrons, near useless in their weakness. Charon watches.

He is a generally amiable owner. Strange, but more than mild compared to Ahzrukhal, and other past men and women. More than capable. A little too young, but every smoothskin was, nowadays, compared to Charon.

\--

The Pipboy pumps the sound of the radio directly into Vaultie’s ears, if he so chooses, instead of being used as a speaker. Charon does not know the science behind it; he never applied to live in the vaults, and he was never chosen. Random tidbits the Lone Wanderer has told him is that there’s a hermetic seal on it, and an actual needle that buries itself into his skin to keep tab on his vitals. It’s the reason why if someone tried to say, yank it off, it would be more likely they’d take the Lone Wanderer’s arm with it than to get the machine off in one piece. He says hearing the music when no one else can has something to do with vibrations in his inner ear or something, but Charon is just glad that he can listen to music without drawing every deathclaw, raider and supermutant in a thirty foot radius towards them. He’s a strange owner, but he’s not the worst. It makes him uneasy that the status quo has gotten undeniably better; there’s room for disappointment there.


	2. Chapter 2

When they find Argyle’s skeleton, Charon is not surprised, but Vaultie’s head droops in silence. Maybe prayer. He knows the kid listens to Three Dog and never misses an episode of their exploits, and actually meeting the man of legend made the kid’s knees shake like the walls before a metro tunnel collapse. The walk back to Tenpenny tower is long, and silent.

He ignores Gustavo’s snippy jeers, and brushes past Lydia Montenegro’s disgusted sneer. Or maybe, he is too obtuse to notice. Charon knows they’re not welcome, can feel the glare of every guard against the back of his neck, but Vaultie is on a mission to the upper levels of the tower. He takes the steps two at a time, and pats the gnome outside of the door on the head twice before entering. Dashwood welcomes him with a boisterous smile and an offer of a Nuka.

"That's okay," Vaultie says, hands up, voice reedy. Dashwood pulls a seat out for Vaultie; he does not bother for Charon, not out of rudeness, but knowing the ghoul would prefer to stand.

Sitting around a table and surrounded by his collected spoils of his past, Vaultie tells Daring. The older man smile thins; he leans over, and squeezes Vaultie’s shoulder.

“I… should have known. I was young, back in the day, and reckless.” Dashwood is well-spoken; Charon wonders how far away that radio show was from the truth. (Tries to rack his brain of the past if the name ‘Argyle’ was familiar.) “You take care of your friend, here. Watch each other’s back.” The old man’s eyes are bright; in a way, they remind Charon of the Lone Wanderer when they turn to him, except a little wetter, a little wiser. Dashwood pats Vaultie’s shoulder and he nods, spellbound. “We all need to stick together, ghoul and man alike, if we’re going to all make it.”

He is only 19. When in his suit, Charon forgets this often; in battle, he is cool and collected, and eerily skilled beyond his years. But he’s quickly realizing the choices he makes are those of an optimistic child. Charon can only gnash his teeth, follow, and keep him as safe as possible. Roy Philips turns out to be as trustworthy as he is smooth, which was exactly what Charon had thought the first time he laid eyes on the ghoul. Vaultie buries his face in the front of Herbert Dashwood’s bloodied shirt and his shoulders shake.

Charon takes a few steps forward. The blood on the floor of the tunnel makes the bottom of his shoes stick to the tile. Vaultie is hunched over, and even when Charon crouches next to him, he towers over the younger man. “… we must leave. It’s not safe here.”

Vaultie hiccups. “He _lied_.”

“He’s not the first. He’s not the last.”

“But I _tried_ and they weren’t all _bad_ and they didn’t _deserve this_.” His head whips up, and with his visor down Charon can see his red rimmed eyes and his blotchy face and the strangled expression there. He wants to hate the kid for being so damn _innocent_. Of _course_ they didn’t deserve it, of course Daring didn’t, that’s why he was murdered. It’s not the worst ones who get killed in the end. It’s been months since his employer had supposedly left that vault and yet—

Charon settles a hand on his shoulder, and squeezes.

They rarely ever make eye contact like this, and it seems to stretch on forever, though it only lasts a moment. Vaultie nods, slowly, and slides his solid visor back down, obscuring his face completely.

\---

Charon’s not sure if he’s actually the Last, Best Hope for Humanity. The Lone Wanderer does great good, of course. But anyone can ask him for help, and as long as they don’t shoot or threaten him in a way that sets him off he nervously smiles and nods and goes off to help them. He doesn’t know why he feels the need to help every ungrateful asshole this side of the Capital. Or maybe, he does; the kid’s hopeful smile every time he returns from a completed deed or arms laden with rare goods speaks fathoms. The crushed look when they barely give him praise speaks even more. He _knows_ , but he doesn’t understand.

It’s why they’re in Minefield. Charon bumps bodily into the back of Vaultie, trying to hold back his bulky frame so as not to completely bulldoze his employer over. He’s used to the Lone Wanderer getting underfoot- he wears that damned stealth suit, so heʼs constantly bumping, tripping, accidentally kicking his invisible form more often than the stupid dog he had brought home from the junk yard.

This is different. Vaultie isnʼt crouching, heʼs not invisible, theyʼre not sneaking. Minefield has a population of one (Correction: with the two of them, three), and the man the slavers want won’t leave his roost. Charon is not convinced of this. He’s sure they can get him alive. He had wanted to continue sneaking, the default position that after a month of a sore back and sore legs he has eventually grown to appreciate as much as his master. But Vaultie swears up and down that he won’t leave, couldnʼt imagine leaving. He says this like he knows.

“Good sniper nest like that? He won’t leave.”

Charon finally growls out, “And us?”

“Why don’t… why don’t we just stay here, too? Who will bother us? We can just…” He gestures, almost hopelessly at the tattered pre-war couch sitting in the relatively well-preserved home. When Charon doesn’t respond or react, he starts to flutter around, his voice rising, gesturing at every piece of furniture that looks like a Vault-Tec Advertisement. He’s sure his eyes are wild behind the opaque orange visor. “Look! Everything is here! It’s… it’s safe, it’s home.”

“You are my employer, I will do as you wish.” It’s not what Vaultie wants to hear, and it’s certainly not what Charon wants to truly say. His arms fall limp to his side, defeated. They stay there until they run out of food. Vaultie tries to stuff a beautiful, still-working radio into Charon’s knapsack, but there’s still not enough room. Not until they drop the mesmetron and excess collars.

\---

The side room is ‘his’. He’s a slave. Ahzrukhal called it an employer, employee relationship, and while he himself doesn't like to dwell, deep down, he's pragmatic. He doesn’t understand the nervous smile on the Lone Wanderer’s face when he brings him upstairs and shows him to the pre-furnished room, like he was bringing home a newly adopted child. The couch serves as his bed, and is thankfully one of his most comfortable bunking arrangements he’s ever had. He hates the look on Vaultie’s face, and he hates how grateful he feels at night to sink into the soft springs when he had spent years in Underworld sleeping on the floor. And maybe _hate_ is too strong of a word, because Charon hasn’t had strong emotions in years, too tiring and too time-consuming to feel when most of his time is taken up by psychologically enforced guard duty. He just quietly simmers in his disgruntlement.

He does not decorate ‘his’ quarters, but the kid has taken care of it by lining the shelves with old globes and Nuka-Cola trucks. They visit Crow outside of the Megaton gates and, rifling through the old magazine collections, Vaultie asks which ones Charon would like for ‘his bookshelf’. Charon noncommittally grunts. Vaultie laughs, nervously, and ends up buying one of each because Crow is a good businessman and with only his vault suit on, the Lone Wanderer shrinks.

Charon feels numb flipping through a magazine. He’s probably done this before, many years ago, but he honestly cannot remember a time where he read for pleasure and the words swim out of focus before his eyes. He peers through his open doorway. The Lone Wanderer fiddles with his jukebox in the hallway; it’s almost all static.

\---

“Tourist?” Willow’s voice cracks, either due to unease or age, it’s hard to tell. Vaultie turns. Peering at her with orange, opaque eyes is a feral with it’s mouth perpetually stretched into a scream.

Charon clears his throat. Vaultie’s shoulders jump and he scrambles to pull the mask off.

“S-sorry, Willow. I forgot—we were in the museum proper. Getting some stuff.”

Her fingertips brush the butt of her rifle, “Don’t apologize.” She mutters, eyes wary, turning to Charon and then back to Vaultie. “That’s feral, right?”

“Right.” He affirms, hesitant and nervous, worrying the tanned flesh between his armored fingers. His voice echoes in his helmet. “Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize.” She finally takes a seat on the ledge of the museum metro, pulling a pack of cigarettes from her jacket. She takes her time, packing them down with a few rough taps to her wrist. The brittle packaging crunches against the motion. She flips the package open and pulls a cigarette out to place in her mouth; she gestures at them both with the carton, but Vaultie shakes his head, and Charon just stares impassively.

She arches an eyebrow. She can’t tell if she hates them more than the sneering Brotherhood of Steel, or bewildered humans who somehow manage to wander this far. “Do either of you have a lighter, at least?”

Vaultie approaches, almost shyly, pulling the haphazard lighter—a piece of twisted metal, a spare motorcycle handbrake, flamer fuel—out from his belt and up to Willow’s cigarette. He lights it with too much concentration. Willow tries not to snort from amusement too hard and put out the flame.

“So…” She ventures, letting her first long inhale serve as a pause. Vaultie retreats back, almost stumbling into Charon; he’s a solid block, and barely seems to register his small stature nearly bouncing off of his frame. “Does that work?”

She gestures to the mark that Charon is now holding, Vaultie having shoved it hurriedly into his hands when Willow had asked for a light. Charon grunts in reply. Vaultie nods. “It… works pretty well.”

“Yeah?”

Vaultie looks over at Charon; without his face visible, it takes a moment before Charon registers the stare. He clears his throat. “Ferals treat him similar to how they treat us. Can’t tell the difference.”

Willow nods, and hums, thoughtfully. “You should see Barrows about that. He’d find it interesting.” She chuckles, “Or sneak up on Patches with that thing on. He’s easy to spook. Probably would fall right over seeing you in that.”

“Hah. Haha. Maybe.” Vaultie laughs, quietly, his face turning down towards his feet. Willow reaches over and pats his shoulder.

“You wouldn’t, would you? You’re a good kid. Just like the radio says, hm? I don’t think I ever thanked you enough for fixing that radio, now that it’s good, Three-Dog spends more of his time complaining about more interesting things…”

\--

_“Hey, remember those down-on-their-luck Ghouls who wanted to share the luxury accommodations at the fancy shmancy Tenpenny Tower? Looks like they finally got their upscale address… and looks like the wackadoodle 101 kid changed his mind. What gives, 101? You just wanted the whole place to yourself? Do we really need another empty monolith in these wastes? Jeeeesus. I give it a week before it’s crawling with raiders or molerats.”_


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bit of a short chapter. But things are picking up! Thanks again for the comments. <3

Charon doesn’t ask questions; curiosity had been purged from his body long ago by force and switch, long before his contract traded from hand to hand post-war.

Nevertheless, he finds himself interested, if duly.

They yo-yo around the Capital Wasteland, going to the inner catacombs of the city, and just as they near the water backtracking their steps. Heading out for some radio signal long lost or a small child crying to be saved by fire breathing ants or finding bottles of Quantum. They don’t seem to ever venture too far north, and the city metro’s close-quarters seem to sing a sort of song that attracts the Lone Wanderer and rightly warns all others away.

Charon can anticipate the sign of the change, when it happens the third time around. Vaultie’s footsteps stop and he raps his knuckles thrice against something hard in quick succession.

 _Time to turn back_.

They’re so close now even Charon can sense they’re near the Chesapeake (or is it the Potomac? He can’t remember anymore.) by the briny smell of the brackish, irradiated water in the air. It’s getting more humid; if the wasteland had seasons, Charon would swear they’re nearing summer, but he hasn’t kept track of time in years. Vaultie tries to avoid water when they can. It’s smart, strategy-wise. Mirelurks are there, and radiation.

Vaultie purposefully bumps his cloaked body against Charon’s. He stiffly turns around and follows after.

\--

Vaultie finally speaks up, four days later, when Megaton’s highest aircraft points are just starting to peak over the horizon.

“We’re going to offload things. Uhm,” His voice is floating somewhere behind Charon, and it slowly moves from his left to right side. “Can you talk to whichever trader is there? Can you sell everything we’ve got?”

“I can talk and barter with whoever you wish.” Charon replies.

There’s silence.

“We’ll get everything situated. We’ll, uhm… put away the stuff we don’t sell.”

“Of course.”

More silence. Charon shifts his gun in his arms. Vaultie suddenly appears before him, standing at full height. It’s not much, compared to Charon. He’s towering over the younger man. “Have you ever been to Rivet city?”

With his helmet on, his facial expressions are unknown, but he wears his heart on his sleeve; his voice is tense, nervous.

Charon nods, curtly. His employer rarely ever stands in the open. It’s making even him uncharacteristically nervous; not that he couldn’t easily protect him out here. But it’s strange, seeing him here, in the flesh, without walls surrounding them and assured safety. “Once, many years ago--”

“We’re going to find my father!” The Lone Wanderer blurts out, frenzied, rushed.

Charon stops, his face twisting into a frown. He huffs out an exhale through flared nostrils. They stare at each other before Charon realizes that Vaultie wants—needs—an answer. (It’s only just been a month and a half of traveling. In the future, Charon realizes all things need a punctuation mark, and provides them for the unspoken rule.) He doesn’t know what to say other than, “Of course.”

Vaultie nods once, and crouches down. They don’t talk again until they’re past Stockholm’s watchful gaze.

\--

“Don’t you sleep?”

Charon doesn’t look up from cleaning his shot gun. “No.” He grunts, running a filthy rag over the barrel of his gun. “Not much.”

Vaultie is practically nodding off while sitting up, back pressed against the ticket booth’s wall, head lolling. “How?”

Charon shrugs, glancing up. “You should get some rest. I’ll watch.”

His shoulders slump. “Promise?”

“I’m sworn to protect you first and foremost.” He answers. Vaultie sighs, sliding his body down to finally rest against the bedroll laid out. His head lays heavy on cushioned headrest. He has bags under his eyes, and when he closes them they don’t open again.

But still, with eyes closed, Vaultie talks; “Do you.. what… what do you do, if you don’t sleep?”

“Keep watch.”

“And?”

“Clean my gun. Clean your gun. Take inventory. Count ceiling tiles.”

That earns a lopsided smile. Vaultie curls in onto himself. “If… I stayed up, all night, all day. I would get _so_ much done.” His words are thick with sleep, half-whispered, and he stifles a yawn. Charon doesn’t answer; it’s not long until his employer falls asleep.

\---

Charon wades into the thick of the firefight with his shotgun blasting; the kickback is beautiful, the sound pleasantly deafening. _Happiness is a warm gun_ , which: if he can remember correctly, that was a part of a song he was particularly fond to and would listen to secretively. If he remembered correctly. If his memories weren’t fabricated. (But why would they fabricate American contraband?)

He blasts one supermutant full of one, two rounds of buckshot, and the beast staggers and falls; he whips around towards the upcoming mutant with rebar club raised, only to watch it stop mid-swing as a high-caliber bullet bursts the mutant’s head like an overripe fruit.

He’s trying not to be foolhardy, but the Lone Wanderer as his backup makes him naturally more confident. He picks out most incoming threats before they even come onto his radar; that leaves him with the immediate, blowing them back before they can even reach where his employer is perched, popping off killing or severely debilitating shots each time. The shots that render the mutants lame are rare; he’s only see Vaultie miss a handful of times.

Charon ducks down, hunkering down behind a concrete median. He jerks off the magazine of his shotgun, reaching to his hip where another clip is tied and shoving it into his weapon. He can load most weapons in seconds; his shotgun has become second nature.

He peers around the fence. There does not seem to be any other mutants in sight, and he cannot hear any that have been drawn by the gunfire; it’s only the sound of his own breath, and a rapid, staccato tapping.

_Turn back._

Charon twists his head around. Something bumps into his side, and almost bowls him over in his crouched position. He was not given explicit orders not to speak, and while he does not mind always traveling, always killing, something is pulling him to ask: “Are we not going to Rivet city?”

The rapping of knuckles stop. There is silence.

Fingers grasp the edge of the shorter sleeve of his leather armor, brushing against his ghoulfied skin; he pulls back, but Vaultie is tugging towards the metro station ahead. There’s fingers drumming against the pauldron on his shoulder.

_Go._

\---

Adam nervously taps his fingers against the ground. He can’t speak; his winterized combat armor has a large cowel that smartly covered the face when pulled up for protection, but it keeps him completely muffled in the layers. On the opposite side of the corridor, also crouched behind the conveniently symmetrical half wall, Benji’s eyebrows raise and then furrow in confusion at the tapping.

He feels his heart clench with anxiety; the tapping changes, and suddenly his fingers are swooping. He makes a circle against the ground, crosses it out, and drags his finger over in the direction of Benji. He does not know why they haven’t heard him yet. He doesn’t know why they didn’t see them when they first walked in. Is it a glitch? Intentional programming?

Benji’s eyes widen with recognition. He mouths, “ _Dragoon_ ,” and Adam nods in relief. He focuses his eyes past the half wall, towards the shimmering form not even five feet away from the Sergeant.

Benji raises his gun. And then he raises three fingers, and he counts down.

\---

In the Weatherly hotel bed Vaultie weeps, “Mom, _mom_.” Into his pillow. Charon counts the tiles in the ceiling.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rivet city.

Doctor Madison Li is a woman with a face perpetually creased with displeasure and lips always pursed. Charon has only the vaguest concepts of motherhood, (Did he ever have a mother? Was he, at one point, something small and helpless and not only needing but _wanting_ in nurture?) but she does not look like any of the faded and cracked advertisements that show smiling nuclear families surrounded by children and green grass.

She looks pained when she sees Vaultie. She recognizes him before he even talks to her. He is marveling at an apple, practically nose-to-nose with it as a worried technician nervously shifts her gaze from him, to Charon’s menacing form to a cranky old man in a corner and asks him to please, step back, in a voice that is much too overwhelmed at the moment.

“It’s fine, Janice. Can you please distract Dr. Zimmer for me?”

The brown haired woman instantly obeys Dr. Li, nodding and skittering off towards the old man and his own bodyguard. The exasperated look Li levels towards them shows that she’s absolutely sick of dealing with men and their body guards at this point in time, but it’s brief before she turns to the Lone Wanderer.

Charon keeps one eye on the conversation, one on Dr. Zimmer arguing with Janice.

“I... It's you. My heavens, you look so much like him..."

There’s no recognition on Vaultie’s face. “You…”

She knew his Father. They were scientists, obviously, and there was talk of a Project Purity, of clean water. Charon feels himself taking a step closer to Vaultie. There’s no love in her eyes there.

“Did… did you know my mom?”

Li’s face crinkles. “I did.”

As the conversation continues and Vaultie tries to pull more and more information about his father and mother Charon notices the slow dawning and realization with each word. He’s sure others would call him simple (and there’s been plenty 9th Circle patrons who did the same under his withering stare, had it screamed at him throughout his life) in the field of human understanding but there’s the way Li’s arms are crossed tightly over her chest, the cadence in her voice: _It’s his fault_. Without his birth, the Wasteland could have had _free water_ by now, clean water, without him, maybe Catherine would still be alive and maybe James would have fallen in love with a _different_ scientist—

Dr. Li begrudgingly pushes a few stimpacks into Vaultie’s shaking hands. “I… wish you luck in finding your father. The rotunda is overrun by mutants.” Her eyes flick towards Charon. He’s used to the sidelong glances, as if he’d get offended for the brethren humans force on him. “I suppose he decided to continue his works 20 years after the fact.”

\---

Vaultie tugs at the collar of an ill-fitting suit, freshly washed and starched. The two of them sit in the back, on Angela’s side, but they still stick out like sore thumbs. Charon did not change out of his armor, but before the ceremony Vaultie took it and meticulously cleaned and shined every piece. (He knows once this is over he’s going to go outside and smear dirt on it, so he doesn’t stay a reflective bullet beacon, like a dog rolling in mud post bath.)

He shifts in his seat, glancing around. The young couple are standing at the front, waiting for Father Clifford to finish his preparations. “She’s, uh. She’s very pretty, isn’t she?” Vaultie turns to his left, towards Trinnie. The girl can’t focus on him with her glassy eyes; it’s a wonder anyone let her into the room.

“She looks like a _slut_.” Trinnie hisses back. Vaultie scoots closer to Charon and smiles like a nervous chimp baring its teeth.

He turns to Charon, and tries again: “She’s very pretty? Right?”

Charon sighs. “Yes. At sixteen most smoothskins usually are.” He grunts. She _does_ look pretty though, in an off-white dress that somehow Gary had managed to find, and a single flower grown from the science lab tucked behind her ear. She is pretty, the groom is handsome, and practically everyone on the boat has gathered today to watch the ceremony; it’s a welcome relief for most from the day-to-day hardships of the wastes. It was certainly a side project on their never-ending quest to find the Lone Wanderer’s father. (And, frankly, Charon thinks its pointless; he’s sure the man’s dead in a ditch somewhere. Scientists that have grown old and soft in a vault don’t survive the wastes long.)

Father Clifford finally approaches the pulpit with tears in his gentle eyes. “It is my pleasure today to preside over this ceremony…”

Charon tunes the rest out. He has no use for chaplains, no matter how pure of heart and true of spirit they were or were not. He knows they were only invited because of their involvement.

“Charon.”

He blinks, slowly. Vaultie is tapping out the sign for _attention_ on his forearm, a quick drum of fingers. Vaultie hisses out a soft _psst_ , and then his name again: “ _Charon_.”

“Yes.” He replies, slowly, and under his breath, not taking his eyes off of the ceremony. Diego has cleaned up remarkably well from his humble acolyte robes. He is ruddy cheeked, and sweating through his threadbare suit. He wonders dimly if it’s because he’s already ‘seduced’ Angela, as he so quaintly put it when talking to the Lone Wanderer. With the luck of young love, his blushing, young bride is probably already pregnant.

“Is this ok?”

“I do not understand—“

“I gave… Angela those ant pheromones.” Vaultie ventures, glancing nervously from the ceremony to Charon. At the time, she had seemed very convincing (everyone always seemed convincing). She was 16, sure, and just because when he was 16 he had wanted to be a doctor until he realized blood made him queasy (and what a long time ago that was, how funny the very notion of that) didn’t mean that other young people didn’t know exactly what they wanted. And love, real love, the kind between a husband and wife, sounded truly nice. Marriage sounded secure. Like a contractual guarantee of partnership and support. “But, uh. Would Diego had married her without them?”

“I do not know.”

“No, but—“ Vaultie stops as Trinnie’s eyes swivel towards him, glaring angrily. He only pauses a beat before continuing with whispered urgency, “Shouldn’t, uh. Uhm. L-love, shouldn’t that be… that shouldn’t be because of pheromones, like that. I mean. Non-naturally occurring kind. Right? Is this bad?”

Charon hasn’t glanced over at Vaultie once. He exhales a short, quiet sigh from his nose. “I do not usually think about the morality of free will.” Charon replies, facing forward, his eyes on the ceremony as Diego leans in to kiss his new bride. The crowd breaks out into polite applause, even Trinnie, who has started to gently wail. The Lone Wanderer stares at his feet.

\--

Adam asks Amata out when he is thirteen, because ever since he could remember Jonas would make comments like, “Aren’t you a lady’s man?” after he’d come back to the lab post play date with Amata, or “Just like me and your mom, huh?” from his Father when they would hang out all day swapping comics and lamenting at how mean Butch was. And he figured that was what he was supposed to do. Amata let him down gently; she was always incredibly sweet. He cried for a day then got over it.

\--

Adam is eighteen and five-sixths. He hasn’t counted his birthdays like that since he was ten, but ever since he left the vault he’s been counting every day religiously. So, he is eighteen years and two months away from his birthday. If the simulation went by the same time as reality did, of course. But he still counts the days. He’s pretty sure the seasons don’t really change here in Alaska. The cold might get colder, but every day is white. White, and red. Two days ago he was in the bunkers near the pulse field, trying to retrieve some wounded men who were wandering back. The man wedged a foot against the support of the wall and peered over the trench wall.

He wanted to scream, _get down, what are you doing, get down_ , but his arms were heavy with a man that’s shaking like a leaf and can barely curl himself out of the fetal position. Bullets fly and the man crumples in an instant to the trench floor. The man he had been trying to drag away crumples and folds up into himself, screaming at a corpse that in moments will be shimmering away from only his eyes.

It’s not real. None of this is real. It’s a simulation. That’s what the Outcasts told him before he belted in: it’s a simulation, with the fail safes off. A bullet to the brain in there was a shock to the heart out there. In here, out there. All the same. But _this_ is a simulation, the Outcasts had said, and that’s what Adam said. He chanted it to himself at night in his bunker like a man raising the dead: _this is a simulation. This is a simulation. This is a simulation._

He left the crumpled man in the trench. Not because it’s a simulation, or for lack of caring, but because his arms are weak and he wants to call some help for the rescue.

Some days he realizes it more than others. The corpses all shimmer away, and tear his brain away from the finality of death. But the days when he’s amongst soldiers—his men, saluting him, talking amongst themselves, quiet chatter of fears and wants and wishes and dreams… sure, there’s the occasional jingoistic shout that sounds like a programmed bark to be called when he hits a certain point in the programming.

But then Benji glances at him with a lopsided smile, stamping his feet in the cold and muttering, “I don’t think I ever told ya… I have an aunt in Anchorage. And I don’t know how she is, but we need to get these commies off her front door.”

Adam nods, mute save for the chatter of his teeth as he reloads a sniper rifle he just barely learned how to shoot. The moon hangs high overhead the listening post. He is eighteen and one month, two weeks and six days away from his birthday.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First of all-- thanks to those who commented, I'll be replying to them all individually ASAP. But seriously, thank you so much. You're keeping me writing!

“Kid!”

Vaultieʼs neck nearly snaps off to turn towards the source of the voice calling for him-- Charonʼs voice, followed by the loud boom of his shotgun, easily blowing the head clean off of what had been an approaching molerat. Its body fell, limp and lifeless, only a few feet from where he was sitting.

“I found what was needed.” The ghoul grunted, his eyes still trained on the animal. Though behind an opaque mask, even he could tell that his employer was staring owlishly up at him, shocked, just a bit addled. “You should be more careful. There is danger here.”

Vaultie nodded, coughing. “I-- th. Thank you. Charon.” He sputtered.

Charon grunts in affirmation, reloading his gun as he asks, “Is there something on your mind?”

“No. I’m—I’m fine.”

Charon takes him at face value. The Lone Wanderer glances at the mole rat, nudging its lifeless body with the toe of his shoe. By the time he’s done sliding shells into the gun, Vaultie has crouched down and started to messily skin the animal with his combat knife.

There’s something on his mind. Charon doesn’t want to ask. And yet—

“Adam?”

His head whips up. He has a fleck of blood smudged across the brim of his nose. “Y-yes?”

He stares at him. Charon’s plan had begun and ended at calling his name and glowering in his way at the Lone Wanderer. It lasted one painfully long minute before the Lone Wanderer cleared his throat and looked back down, the knife stuck fast in the molerat below.

“I just remember things and things come… back? I don’t… don’t mean to be…”

Charon kneels down next to his employer, jerking the knife out of the carcass with a grunt. He goes about skinning the animal, faster than Vaultie ever had. Vaultie sits back heavily with a thump. “Distracted.” Charon finishes, quiet, almost thoughtful.

Vaultie nods, mutely. He pushes himself back up to his knees, to lean over and pull a roll of dried molerat skin from Charon’s knapsack; it served as a placemat as cuts of meat were sliced off, steaming lightly from the heat of the molerat’s body, and Vaultie dutifully loaded them up.

“It happens.” Charon grunts. Adam’s eyes flick up to his face, but he’s staring downward at the task at hand. “During sleep. Guard duty. Eating. Random things make it come up.”

There’s not much left to the carcass; Charon’s found himself shamefully pickier since traveling with the Lone Wanderer. He's known lean times, pre and post-war, and these are not one of them. They usually have plenty of food. The combination of having a good shot and his employer’s near superhuman knack for finding pre-war food kept them fed at relatively okay levels of stale radioactivity. They leave the skin, and bones, most of the time. “It is different for everyone.” He wipes the flat of his blade against his thigh. ”It happens.”

\---

The lab is empty, save for Super Mutants, which they neatly take out together. Vaultie reads terminals, and he finds holotapes that he inserts into his Pipboy to listen to. It is strange to watch him listen to something that Charon cannot hear, with no obvious indication that he can hear something Charon cannot other than the look of concentration on his face. These are not the answers he had wanted, which is obvious enough by the rare frown.

A few minutes later, he sighs, and pulls his helmet back on. “He’s not here.”

Charon nods. There’s not even a sign of a corpse.

Vaultie sits on the ground, and pops the last holotape out of his pipboy, wrapping it almost reverently in a strip of fabric from his knapsack.

“Have you been to Evergreen Mills?”

Charon shakes his head. “No. But I know it is raider territory.”

Vaultie pauses in his meticulous wrapping, “You’re… y-yeah. You’re right." Absently, answering his own unspoken question adds, "Eden, I think. Raiders.”

“Raiders.” Charon affirms.

Vaultie suddenly laughs, tucking the secure holotape into his knapsack, and hauling the bulging thing onto his back. “Raiders. _Raiders_.” He barks out another unconvincing giggle, jumping up to his feet, his head twisting around to face the closed door. “Raiders. My dad. And raiders!” He laughs again, quiet, uneven, then starts hiccupping. A sob echoes underneath his helmet. He stumbles over his feet, and Charon is behind him in a flash to grab his forearm by the elbow in an effort to steady him in his descent back down. He sinks.

“Adam—“

“I’m sorry. I’m s- _sorry_.”

\--

Vaultie’s legs swing out over the water, heels hitting the back of the metal walkway of Project Purity he’s sitting on. He leans his folded arms against the middle metal pole of the walkway railing and rests his chin there. Charon is rummaging through the side pockets of a supermutant that’s lacking a head only a few feet away.

“Don’t kick your heels like that. Mirelurks can hear that.”

Charon doesn’t look up, but the kicking immediately stops. Supermutants are one of his least favorite things to fight. They take a lot to bring down, and have little of the ways in benefit to cost ratio. The occasional hunting rifle or laser gun was nice, but he couldn’t hack off their hands like deathclaws or find expensive drugs on them as with raiders. Charon finds ammo in a pouch on its hip and rips the entire thing off of the mutant’s cobbled together belt, pulling the drawstring bag apart: .44. He stands, pocketing the ammo, and walks over to Vaultie. There’s a moments hesitation before he sits down next to his employer. The kid flinches, almost automatically, to the sudden sound and presence of someone near. Charon does not take offense to it; he thinks it strange, if he was actually afraid of him, that he would still be kept around.

As soon as he touches the ground, Vaultie is speaking: “The water is so _vast_.”

Charon glances out. He can see the other side of the riverbank from here. He wonders how he would react to the ocean.

“I thought… the sky? The sky was so big, and it just—it just goes up forever, really. But water…” His fingers fumble with a nearby pebble, and instead of throwing it off the walkway he gently scoots it over the side with his fingertip into the water below. Its ripple is small and insignificant. “You could get swallowed up…” The swinging of his legs resume again, “Drown. It’s not a… n-not a bathtub, y’know?”

Charon peers out over the water, voice monotone. “Is that something in the water..?”

Vaultie’s feet pull up and back, out from the rungs of the walkway. His eyes are wide, and he whipped his head towards the water, then back to Charon--

If he’s not mistaken, the corners of his lips are turned upward just enough. He’s smiling. Vaultie blinks. And it strikes him—

“A joke?”

Charon’s smile twitches, then falters, his shoulders going rigid. “I—apologize—“

Vaultie suddenly smiles. His face flushes, incredulous, and he looks down, letting out a small laugh. “No, don’t, it’s—you’re…” He snorts, and runs a hand through his mop of curly hair, trying to hide his smile with nervous motion. “You’re a smart ass.”

Charon finds his lungs seizing from fear and they fail him with a fitful cough. Vaultie’s laugh is light, if unsure in its own ability to experience humor. “It’s… yeah. Okay. That was—it was funny.” He laughs, shaking his head, and he slides his legs back over the side of the walkway. He says the word again, quiet, his eyes shining: “Smartass.”

Charon ends his cough with a grunt, rolling his shoulders. He pushes himself up to his feet. He doesn’t know what to say, what even overcame him—Vaultie is smiling to himself, looking back out over the Potomac. He’s drumming his fingers against the bars of the walkway, legs swinging. He has to clear his throat. “However, as your guard, I truly must insist you stop. Mirelurks are attracted to thumping noises.”

Vaultie glances over his shoulder. Charon’s face is impassive once more, shoulders squared. “We should leave soon. Evergreen mills.”

His smile sobers immediately. Vaultie nods, quickly, pushing himself to his feet and grabbing his helmet strapped to his knapsack in once fluid motion.

\--

Behind Charon, completely invisible and with Galaxy News Radio echoing through his eardrums, the Lone Wanderer hums along to the tune of Cab Calloway’s sweet voice under his breath. Night falls, and they find shelter underneath the carcass of an old boat on the edge of downtown and the river, not far from Megaton. Charon sits in the helm of the ship, a decrepit captain’s chair, looking out over the water. He’s surprised momentarily when he feels his head jerk up in a hard resistance of sleep; the water laps seductively at the edges of the hull as the tide rises. Not once during the night does Vaultie cry out.


	6. Chapter 6

They’ve gotten back into the bad habit of dancing around their target destination again, venturing out before being inexplicably sucked back, to Megaton, and now even Rivet City (though never the Science Lab). It’s a combination of excuses, from what Charon can tell; Vaultie can’t say no to a person in need. He’s frightened. And, frankly, his attention is short and wears thin easily.

\--

Charon finds himself in a Pulowski Preservation shelter, the kid pressed up against him so that the door would fully close. He turns his head, unceremoniously clipping Charon’s jaw with his helmet; the ghoul’s eyes narrow in pain, but he’s had too much training to sound out for such a minor sting in a moment like this.

Outside, something is pacing. Its footsteps send tremors through the ground.

The Lone Wanderer pushes his back up even harder against Charon, his body going rigid as one particular step comes incredibly close. Charon levels his shotgun at the door, and gently taps the side of his helmet with the barrel; shaking, he crouches down. If the gun goes off in such close quarters, they’re both undeniably going to be deafened by it, but Charon doesn’t need both of them unnecessarily feeling the kickback. He’s broken his shoulder before.

There’s the sound of Vaultie pulling the 10mm pistol from the secure strapping on his thigh; he reaches up at an angle, tracing and tapping out commands on Charon’s side between a gap in his armor, over the undershirt he wears. It takes him a moment to process the actual meaning of the touches when it burns straight through the threadbare cotton. (He hasn’t had someone touch him for more than a brief moment in passing off ammo in ages--)

_Countdown on five. Go._

Charon shakes his head, once, to clear his thoughts, and nods slowly, reaching out so that his hand hovers over the door release button. Vaultie’s fingertips barely touch as they countdown:

_5, 4, 3…_

\--

“This is ill-advised,” Charon grumbles, his head falling back against the bomb behind him with a dull, heavy thud.

Vaultie follows suit, his own head making a similar noise that, if it weren’t for his own explosion skills weeks prior, would make most people nervous. “W-well…” He chews on his bottom lip, raising his right arm to his face. The Geiger counter ticks steadily. “Okay. This is… is pretty stupid.”

“There is _nothing_ stupid about bathing in Atom’s Glow!” Confessor Cromwell intones, his face following his booming ( _grating_ ) voice in peeking out from around the bomb. Charon twists around sharply towards him, letting out a snarl that sends the man back to his side of the crater.

Vaultie sighs, and sinks further into the irradiated water. “Sorry…”

Charon says nothing. The town moves around them, going about their business. A few people stop and stare, but Vaultie stutters out a simple, “E-experiment,” and they move on. Explanation or not, they would have passed; it’s not that it’s that uncommon to see people in the water, especially if they were recent converts. Seeing 101 and a gigantic ghoul in the puddle was another thing.

Vaultie raises his Pip-Boy to his face again, and when he’s done checking it he lets it flop back into the water. He does it again. The splashback rises up, soaks into the threadbare wastelander’s clothes he has worn for the occasion. This puddle is dank, and dirty; he’s going to need a real bath after this, even if it will eat into nearly his entire purified water ration for the month. He splashes the water, again, making little plopping motions against the surface.

Charon grumbles.

“Radioactivity… heals ghouls, right?”

Charon flinches minutely as a wayward droplet falls into his eye. “Yes,” he uses his thumb to wipe at it, grumbling, “Within reason.”

“Or…” The splashing stops, and Vaultie peers at him carefully, “You turn feral.”

“Sometimes. Barrows knows more than I.”

“Huh.” He resumes his splashing.

Charon sighs heavily, and gently grabs Vaultie’s arm closest to him on his right; the other man goes instantly rigid as Charon raises it towards his face, squinting at the Pipboy.

“Once this hits 300, I must remove you.”

The Lone Wanderer tugs his arm back, “I… no. She needs 600.”

Charon turns his face towards his employer, but he is looking out towards the rest of Megaton, frowning slightly in his resolve. It’s an order: no. Charon crosses his arms and grumbles some more. In his head, he silently counts the ticks of the Geiger, and from the corner of his eye watches Vaultie as he slowly turns more and more green.

_-598, 599, 600—_

Charon stands, and Vaultie’s nauseous head barely turns to follow him; he bends down to scoop the smaller man up. Being a foot shorter, pounds lighter and without his armor on, he’s easy to carry, almost compact in the way he fits in Charon’s arms. People part like the red sea away from the reinvigorated ghoul and a mildly radioactive kid; it takes no time at all for Charon to dump his employer, still heavily supporting him, in front of Moira Brown.

He feels mildly smug when the Lone Wanderer’s feet touch the ground and he immediately barfs on Moira’s shoes.

\--

In post-apocalyptic DC, the day time is hot, and humid, and the nights are cold and somehow _also_ humid. Even with Three-Dog’s warnings, it’s understandable why Wastelanders flock to the tunnels. Underground, the wetness dissipates and everything is generally cool through the miasma of fear of death by raiders or ferals or mutants.

Vaultie takes to the tunnels. The close quarters are good for funneling people through narrow doorways, where they line up perfectly with his crosshairs. There’s solid ground above, below, and to all sides. To him, it feels like home.

Charon prefers the open, if he had a preference. A shotgun scatter works well in close quarters but can also ricochet and bounce back. He’s also seen plenty of cave-ins before, enough that he knows the metro tunnels are just ticking time bombs waiting to happen.

But the Lone Wanderer sleeps more soundly when all four of his limbs can touch something solid and Charon doesn’t sleep at all, so they end their day early near the exit of the metro station, the closest they could find before trekking out towards the location of the Vault his father is at and Evergreen Mills. They pitch tent for the night in the men’s bathroom just before the gate, which somehow still has a locking door on the outside; it’s safe enough. Vaultie places his sleeping roll somewhere dry and away from the drips of the sinks, and he even pulls off his helmet, his mousy brown curls spilling out like water from a broken dam.

Charon presses an MRE into his hand; the other takes it with an uncharacteristically dour sigh, quickly ripping the silvery pouch open.

Charon wants to say, _I hate them also,_ but he refrains. They spend the night in amicable silence. Vaultie cleans out his sniper rifle, reverently, decompiling it like a studied soldier, and placing each piece out on a molerat skin. He watches the movements of his hands, twisting off each piece, the way he runs the old rag over every nook.

When the Lone Wanderer puts everything back together and finally goes to sleep, Charon leans against the cool tile, his shotgun cradled in his arms, and thinks about decompiling and putting back together each and every one of the guns they share between them. In his mind’s eye it’s Vaultie’s hands which are the ones doing it.

\--

“Hostile?”

“Brotherhood.” Charon grunts, then adds, “Outcasts.”

Vaultie’s side presses against Charon. They’re just at the top of a hill, perched high enough to see over while using it as cover. Charon can hear the Lone Wanderer pull the binoculars strapped to his hip off, and they make a light _tink_ when he raises them to his helmet.

Charon sighs, staring straight ahead. The binoculars are pressed into his hands and he raises them to his own face.

“I should… should really get, uhm. See if I can get a way I can add a binocular add-on to this helmet,” Vaultie whispers. “A scope, y’know, that’s fine, that’s just one, but two doesn’t work that well...”

“Robobrain. It is missing an arm. Two T-45ds. One has a plasma rifle, the other a laser rifle. I see a grenade on the hip of laser rifle.” Charon rumbles off. Vaultie exhales, and pulls away from Charon.

The kid suddenly appears at the top of the hill and Charon feels his stomach rise to his throat, quick and fast, as the Outcasts turn on him with their weapons raised. “Hail!” He extends out an arm, “I am a friend of Protectorate McGraw of the Bailey’s Crossroads Outpost!”

They lower their weapons halfway, and the shorter of the two power armored soldiers stepped forward, her head tilting. “The Vault Wanderer?”

He nods, the sun glinting off the stark orange of his visor. Standing atop the hill, even with his small stature he casts a powerful figure. Swaddled in his suit, Vaultie’s voice is steadier, his resolve solid. He gestures back, and Charon rises from his crouched position, slowly. The angle of the hill and the sun casts a literal shadow from his height down towards the Outcasts. They noticeably tense.

“He’s my companion.”

It does nothing to alleviate the new stress in their stance, but their weapons don’t raise any higher. “Well met… the two of you. We just finished a tech search in the junk yard. Nothing but metal and locals.”

Charon exhales, a thin, annoyed puff of air. Vaultie nods, once, twice. “Hostile?”

“Affirmative.” And she pauses, “There wasn’t much of anything in there, even for a local such as yourself to use. But feel free to scavenge, as your kind do. We’re leaving.”

Charon exhales again, already thoroughly exhausted from dealing with them for the neverending two minutes as the Robobrain putters to life. They watch them go. Vaultie starts to slide down the hill, his feet moving to keep up with the incline, and Charon grumbles behind him as he follows.

He does not ask how they know him; Charon assumes even the Outcasts turn the radio on some of the time.

\--

Adam is twenty pounds lighter when he arrives at the Bailey’s Crossroads Outpost from when he first left the Vault; the Outcasts watch him with critical eyes as he wolfs down can after can of expired pre-war food, and he nearly makes himself sick multiple times.

Protectorate McGraw is barely kind, but compared to the harshness of the wastes and the other outcasts around him, Vaultie finds his attention turnd to him.

“When you finish the simulation—“

“If,” One of the outcasts two chairs down mutters under their breath. Another snickers. McGraw ignores them and continues on.

“You can take anything you’d like from what is beyond that door. We can’t get in there without you.”

“And God knows, we tried.” The scribe says, picking at her iguana. She looks bored. “Those Pipboys don’t come off easily.”

Adam nearly chokes sliding on a piece of too-big spam. He coughs twice, washes it down with (good, so good) purified water, and beams up at McGraw.

“I… I don’t need payment. I can do it. I’ll do it tonight.”

\--

They have gotten used to each other. The Vault Dweller no longer flinches around him or spooks easily. Charon does not mind his presence, compared to other things, like deathclaws, or raiders.

Charon crouches in front of him and nearly falls over when Vaultie leans into him; he is smaller and fits up against him, snug, and his sniper rifle weighs heavy on his shoulder.

The barrel of the rifle sways slightly, and Charon fumbles to pull a pair of binoculars fashioned from the scopes of two junked rifles to try and find what Vaultie has focused on. There’s a deathclaw 100 yards out, and there’s a shimmering outline of a warm body pressed against his own right in front of his nose. He finds himself struggling to keep his calm. He doesn’t understand how he can feel the heat and pressure of his body through two separate layers of armor-- “Left a little more. Wind blowing.” Charon mutters. The rifle moves slightly, and on his inhale the gun fires; the muzzle flash is near blinding in the night, and the kickback rubs against his shoulder. His ears ring from the discharge. There’s a slight shimmer and the Lone Wanderer leaves.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First of all- wow. Wow guys, I really appreciate all of the love you sent over at my tumblr. <3 Second, this is a long chapter. Fewer scenes, but long. Thanks for reading!

Charon almost startles when he sees Willow walking into Carol’s Place, his eyes widening slightly, leaning back in the chair propped against the room divider. She notices the slight twitch of his passive facial expressions almost immediately. They've known each other for too long for minute changes not to be noticed.

“Yes, they _do_ let me inside of these walls.” She grins, and Charon’s lips twitch upward, if only momentarily. Willow’s thin brows raise in reply. “Was that some smile I just saw? Mirth?”

Charon grunts, and shifts his shotgun from his dominant hand to the other hand and then back again, “Keep it down. He’s trying to sleep.”

Her eyes turn towards the makeshift room Carol has partitioned off in her little bar, using old screens and a haphazard door. She hasn’t had someone come in so regularly like Vaultie has in years. Carol beams like a proud mother every time he arrives, and almost always follows his departures in near tears. She was like that, always adopting the meek and timid, much to Greta's disgruntlement.

“I’m not speaking loud enough to wake him.”

Charon frowns. Willow waits, patiently. He frowns some more.

Finally, she crosses her arms. “Has he given you a no-talking standing rule like Ahzrukhal did?” She asks.

Charon’s face turns sour at the mention of the man. His body has long cooled and decomposed by now, taken out into the museum proper for the ferals. All that was left was the blood stains on the floor and the bar. “No.”

Willow helps herself to a nearby chair, dragging it near Charon’s post; the ghoul’s brow furrows at the scraping noise, repeating: “He is sleeping.”

“It wasn’t that loud,” She insists, twisting the chair so that the back is facing Charon. She sits in it backwards, legs splayed out and her arms resting on the back of the chair. “So is this the only way you’ll talk? If I make enough noise?” Charon frowns. Willow smirks, tapping her fingers against the wood of the chair. “Are you sure there’s no standing order?”

“Maybe I am not a good _conversationalist_.” Charon answers brusquely. She laughs; if she had been human, it would have been something light, and airy, but even now it only sounds like the soft rustling of gravel. Charming, in its own way.

“Are any of us… what’s to talk about after two hundred years?” She asks. Charon shrugs.

Silence lulls in between them. It’s not the same as between him and Vaultie; he knows she’s going to start talking again, soon. Charon's never disliked Willow. She was a strong, respectable shot, and he appreciated her mouthiness ghoul, smooth skin, and Brotherhood tin can alike.

“So how is serving the Wasteland’s Savior doing for you? Does he treat you alright?”

“He is my employer and I do as he wishes.”

“You know,” Her eyebrows rise as she bulldozes on, “There were some of us that were glad that you left. You always kept us safe, sure, but never at Ahzrukhal's expense, of course. You were a guard in less of a sense than that robot we have.”

Charon is quiet. He levels his gaze on Willow.

She turns hers down, towards the frame of the chair, blunt nails picking at the splintering wood. “And there were times that your title as his bouncer meant more harm than good. We knew it wasn’t your fault. But the things you did to Patches… that time with Gob before he left for good…”

Charon grunts. Shifts his shotgun from one arm to the other, again. He has no ability to leave this conversation; but he is not guilty. He refuses to think of what ifs. Of the necessity of lying guilt and blame on either of the tool or the wielder.

Willow shrugs, her mouth pressing into a thin line. “But this smoothskin uses you for good. I’ve been talking with Winthrop; did you know, the Brotherhood doesn’t shoot at me much anymore, or any other mercenary that leaves Underworld to venture out for supplies?” She looks up into Charon’s eyes, suddenly intent on staring him down. “We’ve gotten more visitors here, mutated and smooth alike.” A pause, “It’s not a coincidence.”

Charon has noticed. It’s not that Underworld was home to him, other than as a place to protect and sleep, but there were plenty of times Charon, while following on Ahzrukhal's heel, would catch some super-jetted out ghoul trying to sneak a box of macaroni from Tulip’s store and punch the man in the face without any prompting. It wasn’t his master’s things, but if his master’s home was threatened…

He has noticed that more people have been coming, that Carol’s is always busy, that Tulip has expanded and moved up to the old 9th Circle and they’ve added extra beds and rooms in her old store front. Willow clears her throat. “Listen, just keep him safe. Things are going good here. And elsewhere, in the wastes, for that matter—“ She holds up her hands as Charon’s look turns near murderous, “I’m not ordering. I’m asking, keep my favorite tourist safe. For everyone. Don’t murder him if he accidentally loses your contract—“

“I would never.” Charon replies, faster than he means to. Willow’s hands lower slightly, and her smile quirks.

“I didn’t think you would. He seems like a good… kid.” A pause. “We heard he killed all of those poor ghouls after getting them into Tenpenny, but, we haven’t seen any of that here.”

Charon rolls his shoulders, looking downward. “Long story.” And adds, curtly, before Willow’s curious eyebrows can rise even higher, “Roy Philips was not interested in peace.”

“I see.”

“He was an evil bastard. He deserved it.”

Willow nods, slowly. “Ahzrukhal evil?”

Charon eXiamen. His glance turns towards the door where his employer sleeps sound. “Yes. Just as evil, if not more.”

\--

Vaultie rolls his bedroll out onto the marble floor, behind the front desk for optimal cover. He is quiet. Charon already knows, though he hasn’t known him long, this will not be a night he removes his helmet.

He stands, and when Charon follows suit he puts out a hand that stops the ghoul in his tracks. Vaultie walks off down the hallway. There is no real reason to follow him, as all dangers have been cleared, but Charon still watches his back leave with unease. He comes back after a few minutes of rustling and clinking glasses later with arms overladen with bottles of beer, and two handles of whiskey. It's comical.

“Do you drink?”

Charon arches a brow at his scrawny employer and his assuredly unblemished baby face hiding underneath his helmet. “Do _you_?”

Vaultie says nothing; he slides his visor up, just to his nose, sitting down on the edge of his bedroll, his body jerking in an effort not to drop them all. They hit the ground much too hard, making Charon wince at the noise. He opens the cap by shoving the bottle against the edge of the front desk and slamming down on it with his fist; the cap goes flying. A piece of the desk comes with it, too.

“They killed the robot, too.” He mumbles around the mouth of the bottle. Charon says nothing, setting up his own roll to sit on. He takes a sip, and grimaces. The next sip is much smaller. Nobody is getting drunk tonight, though he’s sure the kid wants to, in concept.

Charon positions his back against the wall, facing towards the grand doors of Tenpenny tower. They are silent for a while, save the small sounds of disgust Vaultie makes as he forces himself to drink what is probably his first beer in his young life. Charon sighs.

“Are we heading out tomorrow?”

Vaultie frowns, fidgeting with the edge of his visor, trying to pull it down as much as possible while still fitting the neck of the bottle through. “Yes.”

Charon nods once. He tilts his head back, and studies the nice, tiled ceiling of the tower, an engraved pattern older than him, probably. Even that high up, some of them are splattered in blood. “Good.” He grunts. “If you think we stink already, wait until we actually start to rot.”

There is no reply from the Lone Wanderer. He finishes the beer, lies down, and turns over to sleep. It isn’t an easy one.

\--

In the Scrapyard, after putting a large caliber bullet into one raider’s head and filling the other two with buckshot, they found a dog; of course, Vaultie takes to him immediately, his voice rising to ungodly heights as he pulled the flea-bitten mutt close and squeezed him. He had somehow escaped the fight unscathed; his name is Dogmeat.

The Lone Wanderer doesn’t bring the dog out with them on long journeys; he’s too loud, barks too much, too eager to bite the first green ass that wanders in his field of black and white vision. Back in Megaton, he programs Wadsworth to feed and water him and pays Harden Simms ten bottle caps and two teddy bears every time he leaves to take him out and play with him every day.

It’s just another in the strange list of things Vaultie just takes care of, just takes care of without being asked; a stray dog, the metro protectrons, Underworld.

\--

They’re traveling on the outskirts of the city, over rubbled buildings, when Charon suddenly notices that it is awfully quiet. Vaultie’s footsteps don’t make much of any noise at all, but he’s slowly gotten tuned to the sound of his cleats finding purchase in dirt and concrete.

Charon swivels around; Vaultie’s faintly shimmering form is about a yard back.

He raises, flicking his fingers in an effort to get the other’s attention. There’s a movement of the cloak. Charon curls his thumb, tucks the rest of his fingers to his palm and sticks his pinkie out.

_What?_

They’re not on any tin flooring or near any surface that can carry sound, so Vaultie has to approach to convey his message, unseen fingers tapping out a simple _go_ on Charon’s breastplate. They turn back and cross a bridge. They are so quiet, the nearby mirelurks do not even notice their presence.

Adam’s gut clenches furiously as the bronze monument slowly comes into view, standing tall in its own miniature courtyard, and even taller yet on their pedestals. Three uniformed soldiers brandishing their weapons pose they are larger than life, somehow still standing after all this time.

When they get close enough, Vaultie stands. Charon is quick to follow; if his employer wasn’t so taken with the statue, he would have noticed the fleeting turn of emotions on the ghoul’s face as he stands in place. Vaultie places his hand, palm down, on the edge of the monument, and circles it. His eyes don’t leave the figures. From the banks of the shore, the Mirelurks click warily.

When he’s made a full rotation, Vaultie stops in front and kneels down. Charon steps behind him, and when his employer shrugs off the pack on his back he does the same, and hands it down. Vaultie takes it from him, and opens them both up, side-by-side.

Adam collects. It’s what he does. He pulls out his stack of carefully cultivated metro tickets, well-worn and frayed, and the small jar of buttons from shirts and coats too far ravaged by time to salvage, and faded fliers from happier times that advertise costumes and cigarettes and cereal. He pulls out more, and he lines everything up.

He doesn’t know what he wants to leave. He knows he needs to leave—something. It feels right, in his gut, like how before the war they left flowers on graves. But what to leave on a monument for a personal war never truly fought? Behind his mask, his face falls, fingers slowing in their rifling through his things and trinkets. He knows—he knows it’s not usual, at all. Charon kneels next to him, sighing as his joints protest. He takes some of the old miscellaneous papers himself, and rifles through his own knapsack, as Vaultie deliberates, and his fingers touch, and drum, and flick at each and every object.

He cradles a long .308 bullet in his palm, and from a beloved travel magazine tears a picture of a snowy Christmas scene. It’s not enough. Maybe it couldn’t be enough—or maybe, Vaultie thinks, it’s too much, and he’s embarrassing himself, before Charon and a group of twittering, curious mirelurks.

It was a simulation.

But the faces—the soldiers. They were real. It was _them_ , the three of them that he saw from the corner of the camp, as Benji sulked about how he hadn’t gotten chosen for the picture _or_ the interview, even after the two of them had taken out those anti-aircraft guns by themselves with all the heart and all-American gusto they could have managed. It was real, it had been too real. Vaultie stands and places the picture, and the bullet, and a few bottlecaps on the edge of the statue’s pedestal. He arranges them, inexplicably, twisting and turning until it is just right.

He does not jolt when Charon brushes against his side. Balance on a chipped plate and a small rock there is a long, thin stick, of tightly rolled together papers. He shields the tip raised above the ceramic plate to light it with their makeshift lighter.

“Covered in wax.” Charon offers, as Vaultie watches and the light glows red off his helmet. As soon as he moves his hand back, Vaultie moves the plate into his scene and arranges everything accordingly. “Slows the burning. It works in a pinch.”

Vaultie nods, slowly, and takes a step back to survey the scene. It is a slow burn, with a dark, thin stream of smoke emitting from the cherry red tip.

They stand like that. Something gnaws at his gut, but when Adam turns Charon isn’t looking at him, but the makeshift incense. It strikes him suddenly, like a sledgehammer to the head, and he feels awfully, terribly dumb—

“You were a soldier.”

Charon almost looks startled. Not at the words, but that anyone had spoken at all. He seems to mull over the words in his mouth longer than his usual deliberations, his glance falling back to their post-apocalyptic altar. He wets his lips and clears his throat. “Yes.” His mouth presses together in a thin line as his gaze travels upward, to the stoic faces of the bronze soldiers. Finally, he mutters, “Not in the way you’re thinking of.”

Vaultie wraps his arms around himself, grasping his elbows. The silence stretches on before he quietly, quietly admits, “Me too. I think.”

They don’t look at each other. And they don’t ask. When the paper burns a quarter down, Charon catches Vaultie reaching for him out of the corner of his eyes. He steels himself, for some reason; the others mans’ fingers settle on his arm, and momentarily rest there before drumming.

Charon nods. They turn to collect their things, and package them carefully back in the way they were before shifting them back onto their backs.


	8. Chapter 8

Vaultie hangs his suit up on the coat rack upstairs after thoroughly washing it, and the helmet perched on top. It’s generally too delicate, too full of wires and other irreplaceable precious pre-war parts to actually wash, but Vaultie was patient when it came to his second skin. A small rag, some detergent, and two hours later he had gotten every nook and crevice, every bit of dirt and splattered blood.

He offers to clean Charon’s, of course. The ghoul denies; he doesn’t need it clean, and besides, its time to sleep.

Ghouls don’t sleep as much as humans, but Charon sleeps even less. He doesn’t—hasn’t needed it, for a while. He recharges like a battery, passing out for twelve hours at a time to keep going for three hundred more. It’s easy, and simple, and even then he doesn’t need a full, rested sleep. He’s slept standing with his eyes open, he’s slept in the rain, and the dirt. He’s slept buried like a dog underneath snow; but that was long ago, and he’s not even sure if he still remembers how to make a proper tunnel to trap body heat, not that the information would ever be needed again.

Now he sleeps on a plush couch that’s entirely his own (and also, unofficially, Dogmeat’s, because Vaultie doesn’t know how to train a dog to do anything but tear flesh from bone and give paw.) Charon clips off the chest plate of his newly updated combat armor, and the pauldrons and back plates until he’s stripped to just his under clothes, and he hangs them on the school chair next to his makeshift bed. When Charon hits the cushions he’s asleep instantly.

There are four men sitting around a table; there are cards spread over it, and poker chips, and they talk and laugh indistinctly through the haze of cigar and cigarette smoke. Only one has his peaked cap still on his head; the rest are in various stages of comfortable undress, ties loosened and jackets open, their breasts laden with medals that catch the dim tent lighting. There is a pistol in the middle of the table.

There is a loud noise, and the ground rumbles, and all four look up. Then a flash that burns their shadows into the ground.

Charon is up and he’s not even entirely coherent as he stumbles, scrambles to his feet and out the doorway, upending the desk chair and all of the armor piled onto it. He rounds the corner and stops at the vision of the orange helmet, and the suit that hangs like a dead man’s ghost from withered trees.

Charon’s chest is heaving, and Vaultie’s eyes turn to the grip he has on the door frame; his knuckles are white, and he has clearly splintered the wood underneath his fingers.

Vaultie approaches behind him, slow, his arms outstretched. Charon whips around, eyes wide. He lets go of the door frame, flexing his hand.

Vaultie has his hands out as if trying to soothe an animal. “It happens.” Vaultie mumbles, unsure, his face lined with worry. Charon’s face suddenly goes hard, and he nods, grunts and clears his throat.

“It happens.” He agrees, his voice sounding as if he hadn’t spoken in years. He clears his throat again before turning back into his room.

\--

They amble into Moriarity’s bar. There’s still blood stains on the foor from where they got into a little scuffle with a Mr. Burke. He reached for his pistol, and it was a draw who truly shot first. Nova insisted the buckshot had hit first, and Gob said the man’s head had snapped back from a silenced 10mm between the eyes before dissipating into a fine rest mist and choice giblets; but either way, the moral of the story rehashed often in Megaton gossip was that any man who raised a weapon towards Simms (and, in extention, them and the safety of Megaton as a city) would be swiftly dealt with. 

“Aye, and there they are, the Vault Angel and his snarling bodyguard!” Charon realizes his top lip is curling (and maybe he is snarling low in the back of his throat) too late after Moriarity’s comment to stop. Vaultie looks as mildly defiant as he can bear with his face uncovered. “Find your daddy yet, little one?”

Moriarity was incredibly picky about blood stains, despite having not provided Gob with a new bar rag in five years. He had badgered them incessently to pay for damages to the walls and furniture. That’s not _why_ they disliked Moriarity; that was mostly because of his sneering bigotry towards Gob and the way he treated Nova, and Charon personally found his accent worthy of strangling a man for. But it certainly didn’t help.

Neither answer. They pointedly seat themselves in front of Gob, and far away from the antagonistic bar owner leering from the doorway of the backroom. Gob seems too cowed to even try and look pleased at their entrance.

“What can I get you two?”

“Rum and nuka.” Vautie replies, trying to control his stutter as Moriarity’s eyes don’t leave. He’s expecting an answer, of course, and it’s a terrible standoff with Gob looking at the dirty glass he’s holding, Vaultie trying to look anywhere but Moriarity, Moriarity staring at him, and Charon’s eyes boring a hole into the Irishman’s skull.

Charon's hand cuts through the air, a curt _no_ gesture; no drinking on the job.

Gob nods and goes about preparing the drink, prying the cap off of the Nuka and placing it on the bar in front of Vaultie. It vibrates as Charon’s fingers tap out onto the bar top.

He doesn’t even realize that he’s tapping out their all-purpose sign for _danger, threat, kill_ until Vaultie gently but firmly places his hand on top of his and presses it flat against the bar to still it. Gob’s eyebrows rise but he says nothing, pushing Vaultie’s drink towards him.

“One rum and nuka,” He mutters, and Vaultie removes his hand to beam up at his favorite bartender.

“Th-thanks, Gob. Did you… clean this cup extra clean?” He stammers out. Charon tries to contain his sigh. “Because it looks extra clean.” He reaches to his hip and pulls out the caps from his bag to slide across to Gob. It’s the standard amount; he refuses to pay any less, even when Gob offers him a discount. Nobody deserved to get beaten over the difference of three or four caps.

He chuckles, adding, “Just my normal cleaning,” as he runs his rag over the glass in his hand over and over again. Moriarity grumbles under his breath, narrowing his eyes at Charon, and then the back of Gob’s head as he turns around and heads into the back room. Charon snorts with victory, finally turning his attention back to his employer.

As soon as Moriarity is gone he’s leaning over the bar, pulling a wad of papers from his pockets. “I brought you letters from Carol,” He presses them into Gob’s eager, outstretched hand. The ghoul snatches them in unabashed excitement before realizing that he’s crumpling them; he quickly tries to find a dry spot on the bar, giving it a preliminary wipe down with his rag before tenderly spreading the sheets out. “She says she misses you a lot…” Vaultie’s voice lowers, “And, if it was safer, she… she would want you home.”

Gob scans the letters over, bracing against his elbows. He has a half-smile on his face. “She’s great, isn’t she?”

“We’d take you home, Gob.”

The scanning motion of Gob’s eyes stop and he looks up, first in surprise—and then he’s twisting around, looking over his shoulder in fear towards the back room. “Keep your voice down—“

Charon looks mildly surprised as Vaultie blusters on, “I’m… I’m serious, Gob. He couldn’t—I’m pretty sure he couldn’t stop us.”

“He couldn’t stop us.” Charon affirms, though not with any excitement. Gob takes his letters, folding them quietly and carefully, putting each in the pockets of his half apron.

“And I’m serious. Keep your voice down.” He mutters, “Burke offered to pay Moriarity my loans off and when he overheard I got the hell beaten out of me,” His gaze shifts, “I nearly lost my eye.”

Vaultie’s mouth closes with an audible click, his lips pressed together in a thin line. His eyes are burning a slow fire into the wall that separates the two rooms, “But this is different,” He hisses, “It will work. We can… we can walk out right now. I can go back there. I can—I can sneak back there and put a grenade in his p-pocket and—“

_No. No. No._

Vaultie stills at the steady tapping of Charon’s fingers, instantly going mum. Gob shrinks. The Lone Wanderer feels his face flush.

“’m sorry.”

“I understand.”

He finishes his drink in silence. When they leave, Vaultie slides too much for a tip. He knows—He knows he doesn’t understand. The reasons why Gob stays with Morarity when most of the town wouldn’t mind his absence.

The reasons why _any_ person indentured would stay with their master.

But Charon knows. So he defers to him. They don’t return for a while after. Long enough for any black eyes to fade.

\--

Billie Holiday’s voice floats out of the jukebox near the stairwell. Charon buries his fingers into Dogmeat’s fur and scratches behind the dog’s ears. He’s a stupid dog but he’s good and loyal, and as much as he hates the mutt, he can’t blame him. The dog can’t help that he’s loyal. The dog can’t help that he was made that way.

He knows he shouldn’t be drinking, it muddles his ability to protect and serve, but Vaultie pressed the bottle of whiskey in his hands in a way that could be taken as a command. So he drinks the bitter, vile stuff, mixed with a well-chilled Nuka-Cola from the refrigerator nearby. He feels like a Tenpenny resident with the amount of luxury they’re in, listening to music and petting dogs midday as if they have nothing better to do; it’s almost hedonistic.

It’s not that they’ve run out of things to do, but it’s that none of them seem to hold Vaultie’s appeal much past the packing stage. He’s tested Moira’s repellent stick, he went to Arefu and came back (“This is… stupid. Humans can’t drink blood. Vampires aren’t real.” He had mumbled, still nervous in his disbelief, adding more to encourage himself than Charon: “I know because my dad is a doctor.”) and they had checked in on the scrap metal needs of both Megaton and Underworld, having picked clean the RobCo facility that stands in the shade of the looming Tenpenny sarcophagus. They could follow a dirtied map leading to an Oasis, they could finally take out those crazed Canterbury superheroes, but…

Time is ticking on. Charon knows, inevitably, they will start packing for a longer, more somber haul. Go south, towards Evergreen mills, and a garage that holds a Vault. Three Dog has stopped talking about them for a while, and he knows the constant lack of praise the DJ vaults his way, when it wanes, can push him to do nearly anything. And the kid is suddenly in the doorway, his stance relaxed, swaying slightly.

He picks at the flecking paint of the door frame, his face flushed with alcohol. “Come… come dance with me?”

Charon scowls; it’s a request, not a command, the question mark is clear. It takes some mental gymnastics for his mind to settle on the fact that it _is_ a command, since there’s no _will you_ added to it, and before he finishes his thought process his legs are pulling him upward. He steps over the dog beside the couch and takes the Lone Wanderer by the hand. Vaultie tugs him into the more open section of the second floor, and they do a small, awkward, stiff shuffle between the coat rack and the Nuka Cola fridge as Billie Holiday calls him crazy.

Vaultie sighs and his body sort of melts against Charon’s hard frame, cheek resting against his chest. His arms encircle the ghoul’s waist loosely. Charon doesn’t know where to put his hands, and holds them high, much higher than he probably should on his employer’s body to be considered a proper dance. He wishes the kid would just command him to do something, because he’s not sure if he can make any decision himself. He doesn’t know what he wants. And he also doesn’t know if he wants to be told what he wants. He doesn’t think the kid knows what he wants, either.

\--

They walk, and walk. Vaultie changes his direction minutely each time he checks his Pip-Boy for coordinations, and Charon follows. They go south. Tenpenny Tower comes into view. Its looming presence casts a long shadow that they seem to walk the majority of the day in. Vaultie does not look back at it once. He only looks ahead.

Charon walks, and walks, and he wonders, if they find him alive, what kind of man raised the Lone Wanderer. If they’re anything alike, he’s sure they’ll find him alive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Vault 112 is coming next chapter and I am very, very excited. Thanks for reading. <3


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Back on pace again. Lot's of writing for later parts is already written so... enjoy this monster of a chapter.

In the shadow of the skeletal remains of interstate 95 Vaultie and Charon walk. Sweat is dripping from Charon’s ruined pores and rolling in thick rivulets down the back of his neck. Vaultie bumps into him, accidentally; Charon can tell only by the way the kid recoils from him, his entire body apologetic. Before he can slip away, Charon reaches out, and finds Vaultie’s shoulder blade with his fingers.

 _Stop_.

His employer obeys, and Charon eases himself further into the shade of the concrete beast above them, so that he can sit and rest his back against its crumbling skeleton. From his backpack he pulls out two waters and hands one to Vaultie.

His suit flickers, and the cloak falls off as he pushes the orange visor up far enough to reveal his mouth. Greedily drinking, he wobbles in his crouching before finally sitting back on his ass, across from Charon.

After he’s drank half and let the other half dribble messily down his chin, he mumbles a “Thanks.”

Charon nods. They toss their empty bottles to the ground and keep going.

\--

His hand rises to shade his eyes. The light seems impossibly bright, and when he looks upward the ceiling seems to extend forever.

This is the wasteland

His hands are trembling; he can barely hold onto his BB gun in his hands. He had tried not to harm them too badly. He shot to disable. A BB gun to the hand or leg would heal, eventually.

Strangely (or maybe expectedly) security was as good of a shot as he was. He had figured them for authority figures his entire life growing up; it never occurred to him they got the same practice he did down in storage, shooting the occasional radroach and non-moving target that had been new circa 2077.

So they both shot poorly. Mostly. There was still blood on his hands. Officer John Kendall just wouldn’t quit. And—he had taken the 10mm from someone who he got, almost miraculously, right in the back of his hand. Dropped it immediately. There was blood on his hands, and he reached for Vaultie’s ankle as he was running away and—

It had been an accident. The sight of the first officer falling to radroaches, the flesh on his face bloodied and torn by their pincers, almost had him doubling over and vomiting. Jonas lying in a pool of his own blood. He’s sure any fainting fright he had for the bodily fluid has been spooked out of him by now.

He had figured the Vault family. Sure, they teased and ostracized him, but—

He didn’t know any better.

Adam approaches the cliff face carefully. The air is hot, and somehow different; it tickles his throat and makes his eyes water to look out with how bright it is, brighter than any of the lights he has seen before. And he’s never seen so much _space_ before. It’s taller than the tallest ceiling and longer than the longest hallway, and buildings seem to pop up like overturned furniture in the vast space of the outdoors.

He feels very naked, and small, and all he wants to do it crawl back inside the cave leading into the vault. He wants to stay there until they’re not mad any longer, or until his dad comes back and apologizes for leaving and they can both go back in together. He sits heavily down on the ground, lifting his Pip-Boy up.

He checks all of the basics. His vitals are reading okay; the radiation, surprisingly, is zero, same as it was before. The Geiger hasn’t ticked once, and he had expected to burst into radioactive hellfire as soon as the creaky old door leading from the cave had opened.

Naively, he checks his radio. There’s some vain hope that the Overseer’s stern messages are playing, or maybe their music or entertainment stations are happening instead of the warning message and ear ringing sirens of a Vault on lock down. Even Butch’s ham radio station where he occasionally sent out drunk chants of “Tunnel Snakes Rule” and talks about being the best over the airwaves would have been welcome.

Instead, he gets a man droning on. And then music is on the next station. And then the next—

_“This is Defender Morrill. Any Outcasts listening on this frequency report to sector 7-B, Bailey's Crossroads. This is a high-priority message; backup is needed at our location. Any personnel listening on this frequency, please report at once."_

Vaultie’s fingers stray on the dial. In the distances he sees something bob and weave through the air, some jingle burbling from its tinny speakers. He clicks his radio off all at once, shaking his head and the stranger's words from his ears. He takes the stolen 10mm tucked in his waistband in hand, and weighs it in his grasp. He has ammo stolen from lockers he had ransacked on his way out, and he had shot the first clip dry, but when he tries to reload his fingers tremble and he drops the firearm twice before managing to slide the fresh clip in.

\--

Rockopolis isn’t very far from Smith Casey’s garage, and Vault 112, but Vaultie doesn’t know that, yet. Right now, he’s searching for any indication that the long gone hangout of his hero and stalwart ghoul manservant even existed. It’s just rocks. Rocks, and dirt, and more dirt.

Charon’s silence is not empathetic to his small grunts as he tries to push rocks over, and knock on a cliff face for the sound of something hollow, or just— _anything_. He is patient, but there is no sight of the remains of a settlement anywhere, and night is starting to fall. There’s nothing he hates more than sleeping in the open; the open sky brings nightmares he can’t contain.

Vaultie struggles against a rock, his heels skidding uselessly, making small puffs of dirt rise with each staggered step in place. Charon clears his throat; his employer stops. Vaultie’s eyes follow where Charon is pointing, towards the east, where the sunset was barely casting its radiatingly strong colors. There was a crack between the rocks; the crack has light peering through.

Now, Vaultie wonders, had only Charon not noticed that light. Would they have wandered, and preemptively found Smith Casey’s garage? Heard the scrabbling of mole rats below and ventured further downward? And what would have happened.

He touches the door of the garage, traces his fingers through the grime that has accumulated over the years. He can see Charon’s hand hovering over his shoulder, from the corner of his eye, but he never gets the gall to touch him. A sign of comfort, or pushing him forward, Vaultie can’t tell. His stomach twists. He opens the door.

Vaultie bodily shoulders past the robobrain; it rocks on its treads as he heads down the stairwell two steps at a time and stop takes the steps two at a time and skids to a stop at the bottom. Above him, the sign flickering _clinic_ catches his eye.

“M-my dad is probably… he’s probably this way,” He says, not looking back at Charon, voice tight as he glances both ways before turning right. There’s a kind of nervous excitement, trepidation and unabashed hope all sloshing violently in his short body. Charon’s gun is unholstered, but there’s no noise or sign of anything hostile. Just the gentle whirring of machines, and a level of cleanliness he hasn’t ever seen, even before the war.

Vaultie’s thumb is jamming impatiently, over and over, into the door’s button; the seal disengages and it opens. He takes two steps and stops; Charon bumps into his back. The Lone Wanderer is stock still.

“No.”

From the higher balcony of the huge, open atrium, they have a perfect view of the small circle of virtual reality pods, arranged like a quaint cul-de-sac.

“ _No,_ ” Vaultie starts like a spooked animal, his shoes squeaking against the spotless tile of the floor. He rushes towards the first door, slams up against the windows of the clinic palms flat and face pressed. His Father—

Is not there. He’s not _there_ , and even though he already knows what’s happening he’s refusing to give up, going for the clinic door like a drowning man for a life raft. He rips it open in his haste. Everything inside the room is spotless. The xrays on the walls have long ago turn white from the constant light shining behind them, the bones gone, any sicknesses removed. Vaultie knocks over a tray of stimpacks, and looks under a table, his throat constricting.

“No, no no, no, no—“ He leans up, scrabbling to find purchase, upturning perfectly placed clipboards and pressed Vault 112 suits. As if his father would be found hiding between pages and pages of medical documentation, stress tests and blood pressure readings. His eyes are wild, “ _Charon_ , Charon, find my father.”

Charon had followed behind, and now he stands still and straight backed as he processes the order. Vaultie has this room covered, so he turns on his heel to scour the rest of the rooms and—

“No, look for my dad. He’s in _here_.”

Charon stops. Turns. The clinic is overly sterile and sparse. There are three tables, with long thing legs and open spaces underneath, and a medical tray, but no gurney. It’s impossibly bright. There’s nowhere to hide.

Vaultie pulls the Vault 112 suits off of the table, throws them to the ground halfway across the room. He staggers, wheezing, gripping the side of the table and squatting down, trying to make himself small, make himself as small as possible and maybe everything would just—

If he closes his eyes and really just thinks, maybe he’ll open them and this will be his Dad’s medical clinic, and all of the vault suits will say 101, and outside in the atrium there won’t be a single virtual reality pod where his father is most probably hooked up to.

(He isn’t _stupid_.)

Vaultie peels his eyes open at the feeling of fingers on his kneecap; he hadn’t even realized he had climbed underneath the table, back pressed against the wall. Charon is squatting down in front of him, focused, almost clinical.

“Hey.”

Vaultie wheezes.

“Concentrate. What am I saying?”

There are fingers on his kneecap. Tapping. Tapping—

“What am I saying? Stay with me.”

_Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay._

Vaultie hiccups, screws his eyes tight. He’s always been a crier. His father had been mercifully kind towards that, a son that cried, cried too much; it never made it easier in the face of the Tunnel Snakes. He thought Butch was the worst thing in the entire world, then, and he wishes that he could have it all back.

Charon keeps tapping, and keeps tapping. And Vaultie struggles, but he’s never been anything but resilient, resilient his whole damn life to make up for his poor luck. He struggles but finally wrestles his breathing, tries to match the tapping of Charon’s fingers. Their pace slows. His breathing slows.

“I will go into the pod.”

Vaultie’s watery eyes widen. “Charon—no. It might not even.. it might not even realize you’re. Still human.”

The ghoul blows a short exhale through his nose. His fingers are still drumming, but softer, lighter.

“We break him out.”

“It might be… it’s not easy, like that. It could kill him. Even if… we got it open.”

Charon rolls more words around in his mouth, but they taste like sawdust and he can’t spit them out, so he swallows, dryly. Swallows and stares past Vaultie’s head at the wall behind him. His employer is in danger, and he can do nothing about it. Charon suddenly feels his joints acutely aching, squatting on the ground like this.

Vaultie slowly uncurls his body, and he settles on his hands and knees. Charon scoots back, just enough to give him room; the Lone Wanderer is trembling, but he crawls out. They stand up, together.

Charon watches him leave the room, and follows behind, trying not to crowd him. They take the hallway staircase downward, and with each step the momentary calm that had settled over Vaultie’s face is peeled away.

Charon cannot _do_ anything, has no orders, he just follows. _Find my dad_ —as soon as they are in the atrium he is circling, his long legs taking him past each virtual reality pod. Each person suspended barely a corpse, so pale that their veins were see through. Bald. No difference between one gender or the other.

He stops. Vaultie bounces against his back.

James is slightly taller than he imagined, and his hair is wavy, not truly curly like his son’s. It’s only a few shades paler than his son’s hair, also, but that’s because it’s grey, not a brown so soft and timid it seems faded from view. His face is slack, and though wrinkled it is handsome, and kind looking. Charon wonders why a man with that kind of face would leave his son for water.

Vaultie sidesteps Charon, but keeps a single shoulder behind the other; he presses forward, and Charon acts like a barrier, to keep him from jumping onto the pod and trying to bodily rip his father from its grasp.

“Empty one. I need an empty one.” He mutters, turning on his heel. He didn’t have to walk far, and it was Charon’s turn to nearly bump into Vaultie. He bends over to fiddle with the side of the simulator, clearly remembering how it went; there’s a sharp, mechanical hiss as it starts to open up, and though Charon balks away from the foreign machine Vaultie faces it straight on. He refuses to turn around. He _can’t_. He won’t come back, if he does.

“Stay here.” Vaultie says, firmly, and before Charon can say another word he adds, “That’s… th-that’s a command, Charon.”

The ghoul’s mouth closes, slowly. He nods. Vaultie grabs onto the edge of the pod to hoist himself up and into it; his palms are sweaty, and the slide against the overly polished metal as he scrambles into the simulator. He’s suddenly very much aware of how itchy this over-starched old vault suit is on his skin, the way he’s already soaked the pits of it through with perspiration, and his heart beat hammering in his throat—

He’s almost entirely sure he’s going to die before he even starts. He leans back, and the pod slowly starts to come to life. Panic shoots up his spine; his breath comes out in short gulps.

Charon knows it's happening again. The panic. Soldier's heart, shellshock. Some part of his mind screams _danger_ and he’s lurching forward, only for Adam’s head to twist roughly, the side of his jaw smashing hard against the headrest. The other man barely blinks from the pain.

“I said—“

“Your preservation overrides everything—“

“Don’t _touch_ me,” Vaultie practically snarls, and Charon’s hands stop before the pod. Any thoughts of employer preservation are overruled immediately by the first and most holy of his testaments; self-preservation. Because he knows, as strange and diminutive and stuttering the boy can be, he is much more than a boy, and Charon has seen him in action. He has seen—or not seen—him before his bullets fly far and fast and true, and the combination of a direct order and his realization that Adam is now near feral with fear steels his hand. The virtual reality pod is already plugging itself in to his Pip-Boy; the vital readings are fast, his heart beat overworked. He turns his face back toward the video screen, just as the spindles reach out to gently cradle his cranium. Beads of sweat are rolling down his face.

“If I die, take your contract and go back to Underworld. Do not talk to anyone. Give it to Willow as soon as you see her.” He grinds out between clenched teeth, just as the pod closes fully. Charon flinches away. He watches the needles in the arms holding his head slide out; they insert themselves with robotic pre-war precision just under the skin of his temple, and Vaultie’s expression suddenly goes neutral and slack. His eyes roll into the back of his head, momentarily, and then settle into a position staring straight ahead.

Charon steps back, finitely. He’s good at waiting. He can do that, he can guard, until his employer comes back. So, he paces, and he counts ceiling tiles.

\--

Loading Anchorage, Alaska simulation. Mission: the Liberation of Anchorage Alaska from Communist Chinese forces.

Safeties: Disengaged.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No Charon this chapter, sorry. :')

_Motion sickness is normal and subsides momentarily._

\--  
“Oh my _God_ ,” Adam’s voice is shrill with terror, “If my leg is lost if my leg is lost if my leg is lost—“

“Calm _down_ ,” Benji urges—

“If my leg is lost what happens _out of simulation_ will there be something to make it b-bad out of simulation what will _happen_ \--!”

Blood is gushing hot from a shrapnel wound in his thigh. All of the dog-eared medical textbooks are coming back to Adam now. He hit a vein, a big one, if the dark crimson spurting between Benji’s fingers is any indication. His eyes are wide and focused only on the wound. Benji curses, pushing down even harder. “Jesus, quit panickin’!”

From out of nowhere Benji seems to materialize a stimpack that he’s quickly thrusting into Adam’s leg; it jerks, and he chokes out a broken noise at the pain. Next, comes another vial, and as soon as it pushes into his leg and pulses he knows it’s Med-X.

“Listen, we can’t be here long, this place is crawlin’ with reds,” Benji urges, tearing at Adam’s shirt to rip of a long piece of hem. As soon as he does, it shimmers with light and is replaced by a perfect copy; neither seem to care or notice. He wraps the leg with the makeshift tourniquet. It seems to work better than it should, but then again, Adam’s not thinking straight. “This’ll help but we gotta make it through quick.”

Adam sees the glint of a needle, two barrels, and he’s clamoring to put his hands over his thigh, despite the pain that burns up his legs. “N-no! No Psycho!”

Benji’s hand wobbles. “Why not?! It’s prescribed, what, you one of those—“

“Trust me,” Adam’s voice wheedles with the pain but he grasps at Benji’s arm like a vice, starting to use it as leverage, “P-please. Give me another Med-X. I’ll be ok.”

Benji hesitates, but he drops the Psycho. “Shit. Fine.”

Adam struggles to sit up. He wonders what his body looks like, suspended in stasis outside; is his face contorted in a grimace, is he shaking there? Or will he suddenly flatline under the scribe’s watchful if distrusting eye? Pulled from the cocoon of the virtual reality pod and thrown next to the mutilated corpse of the other vault dweller? When he closes his eyes he can still see the words flickering "safeties: disengaged" as the pod’s metal tendrils slid into his head. The snap of Benji’s fingers inches from his face jolts them open.

“Hey. No sleepin’. That’ll put you under. Let’s go.” The other man hefts an arm around him, and with little struggle the combined effort of the two of them get Adam to his feet. He does not lean on the wounded leg, instead leaning heavily on Benji and his good one. “We’re gettin’ out of here, alright? Fuck those commie assholes.”

Adam licks his dry lips, “Y-yeah… Fuck ‘em.”  
\--

If General Chase had made this as his pet project, and it was going to be used as a training tool, than why the holotapes? Adam understood the masturbatory chiseled features of the General, the jingoistic shouts, the way the soldiers in his squad followed him unconditionally. He understood why they put in the vertibirds instead of the helicoptors they had used at the time, if his pre-war history lessons were remembered correctly. He even understands the Chimeras—never mentioned in any books, completely fabricated so that Chase could make his medals really gleam. He won _Alaska_ , damnit, and he won it while they had gigantic robot tanks with more firepower than the Americans could dream of, but with their resolve—

What Adam doesn’t understand are the holotapes. He finds the first one near an intelligence briefcase he picks up (and it immediately dissolves into a shower of sparks, and his palms tingle where the cool handle had been) and he places it in his Pip-boy.

_“Molly, I hope this tape gets to you, someway somehow. I don't have a lot of time, but you need to know what happened to me…”_

Adam feels his stomach twist and lurch, and he looks over to Benji for guidance but the other man is pointedly looking away. And he doesn’t understand, and he can’t ask, because every time he says something about a simulation everyone around him gets mad and thinks he’s going crazy.

_“I can't do this. I'm so afraid, Molly. I don't want to die. Oh my God, I don't want to die...”_

“Stop fuckin’ listening to those.” Benji finally says, after Adam listens to it for the umpteenth time in the med bay; he startles, staring at the gunnery sergeant like a deer caught in the headlights, his finger hovering over his Pipboy buttons. He retracts them back, as if burnt, and his eyes go elsewhere.

“You knew him?”

Benji shakes his head. “Don’t matter, do it?”

“Did he make it out?”

Benji smirks, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “Will you quit thinkin’ like that? Lieutenant of the Suicide Squad. Jesus. I don’t know.”

Adam looks down at his Pipboy, and he fiddles with the knobs so that the sound plays internally. He wonders why none of the others have them. He wonders why these holotapes were included at all.

\---

On his first day out of the base, Adam stops at the sight of four Chinese men kneeling in the snow and lined up. The American soldier puts a neat bullet into the back of each skull. The last guy, he takes the hostage’s hat off first before shooting him, and he tops the nearby snowman with it.

\--

Vaultie’s fists are too small. He has to remind himself how to curl them, with the thumb tucked or not; he hasn’t fist fought in a while, probably not since the Vault, and that was defensive against Butch and Freddie and the rest of the Tunnel Snakes.

Timmy’s nose makes a sickening sound underneath his knuckles. He has to remind himself that he’s also a kid, in this, and as he repeats it in his head in time with his punches another well-known chant bubbles up in the back of his mind: _This is a simulation. This is a simulation. This is a simulation._

\--

“What the hell are you doin’?!”

Adam finds himself backed up against the wall; there’s hot blood splattered onto his face, which is quickly dissipating in a shower of light and pixels as the Commando’s body starts to cool at his feet. “I was—I was trying to reason with him— I can speak--“

Benji crams himself up against Adam, his rifle digging somewhere into his ribs; it is not the motion of heady romance novels. It is angry, and aggressive, like a dominant dog flexing teeth over the neck of another, and Adam instinctively curls himself inward, expecting a slew of curses and a few punches to the gut. When Benji yells he can feel spit fleck out, hot, onto his wind-blistered cheeks. “They have not been programmed to take captives, you imbecile!”

The words almost pass Adam by, he’s so terrified, by the situation, by Benji’s sudden, biting anger; it doesn’t occur to him what is said until he has left and the cold comes rushing in around his sides. “It… programmed…?”

“You heard what I said.” The other man barks. “Come on. We need to get going.”

Adam’s eyes are wide and he has to jog to catch up with him, grabbing Benji by the arm to whirl him around. “N-no! What did you say!”

Benji jerks his arm away, rolling his shoulders when Adam shrinks back. “I said the Communists ain’t gonna take prisoners. They don’t have feelings like us. Come _on_.”

Adam falls into step behind him. His thigh aches. He wonders if it still will out of the simulation.  
\--

This is not the months long excursion of Anchorage. Vaultie won’t allow it. He trots back to Betty with blood on his knuckles and the adult’s wary stares following him. His chest is heaving when he skids to a stop in front of her; he’s tired from the fight, despite it being mostly one-sided, tired from bolting out of there.

Betty looks amused, but there’s something pointedly off about it. Vaultie has seen his share of small children with a love of causing other’s immense amounts of pain, but the twist to her lips is too strange, too complicated for the base glee of a child smiting ants underneath a magnifying glass.

“That was good… I was expecting something a little more creative than a senseless fist fight, but it was still good. And the tears!” Betty leans forward, and Vaultie flinches. But he doesn’t move fast enough and when Betty touches his cheek, her fingers come back wet. “From you both. How marvelous.” The small girl’s voice shifts easily into that of a much older man, heavily accented in a way Vaultie has never heard before.

He scrubs at his face with the back of his hand; he hadn’t even realized he had been crying. “Where’s my dad,” He asks, voice pinched, quivering and rising in tone with his fear and anxiety: “Who are you? What is this place? Let me out—“

“Ah ah ah,” Betty clucks, hands on her hips, and Vaultie falls silent as full-body shivers travel up his spine. “I will reward you with one answer.” Betty’s voice shifts back to a young girl’s squeal as she adds, “And then we can go back to playing!”

There’s so many questions he can ask, but his throat is closing in and he looks down at his too-small fists. “When will you let me out?”

Betty smiles. “When we are finished. I’ll let you and your dad out once we’ve had our fun. But I run this simulation—I _own_ you, in here. So you’ll do as I say.”

“And…” Vaultie raises his fists suddenly, trying to put some steel behind his voice, “What if I don’t want to? Huh?”

“Try it.” Betty smiles, and it makes Vaultie’s stance falter. “Tranquility Lane is special. If people die here, they don't really stay dead. Well, most people anyway. You, though... You're special. If you die, you don't come back.”

_Safeties: Disengaged._

Vaultie feels his palms become clammy as he uncurls his fists. Betty laughs, light and airy. “Are you ready to play now?”

\--

They have been practicing nonstop. Adam is terrified there is a time limit on this simulation; that, similar to real life, if they take too long, the Chinese will overrun the base and they will win, and the pod will put him into cardiac arrest. The bombs from beyond the pulse field seem to only go so far, as if they’re held back by something, an invisible force, programming limitations; they never seem to get any closer, at least. And while he can see snipers and commandos skulking at the edges of the Chimera Armor Depot and the Listening Post, they come no further, held back by something unseen, dead behind the eyes.

Adam’s fingers fumble numbly as he tries to reload his sniper rifle. He’s not sure why he chose this weapon, of all weapons. On the outside, he had finally upgraded to a 10mm submachine rifle that shoots at about ten bullets a second and only three ever seem to hit the target at a time. Here, he was given a plethora of options, all in mint pre-war condition.

He was drawn to it. He had seen the glint of Stockholm’s scope from his perch above Megaton. It was a beautiful ability, to be able to shoot something miles before it could even see you, let alone harm you.

His sergeant gunnery watches, face pinched. “Loosen up a little. Don’t you remember bootcamp?”

Adam exhales as he squeezes the trigger. He hits a foot off, to the right, and a little south of his intended target. “…. No.”

“Really?”

“N…. never went.” He mumbles under his breath, focusing.

Benji goes quiet. In the back of his mind, Adam wonders if the program is trying to read him for lying, and then coming up blank. Wonders how that translates to Benji’s personality package. Instead, the man just says, “Okay,” with a shrug, his leg bouncing to keep it from falling numb sitting on his makeshift seat of extra sandbags.

\--

“Mr.R-Rockwell… your husband—he. H-he hates you.”

Vaultie’s voice is familiar in his own ears but all wrong; too high, too young, he hasn’t heard himself speak like this in years, and it’s giving him a feeling of unease that just adds to his overall sense of dread. He can’t see in color. The world is so perfect, so perfect, and Betty’s smile is so wrong. And it’s all fake.

Mrs. Rockwell turns back from the kitchen counter, her brow furrowing. “Well now!” She crosses her arms, rolling pin in hand. “What a nasty lie to say. Young man, you ought to apologize. I will not tolerate that kind of nonsense in my house.”

Vaultie shrinks. “Sorry. S-sorry ma’am.” His voice breaks at the end; this isn’t going to work. How is he going to convince them to break their marriage vows? She turns back to the counter, setting the rolling pin down.

\--

He doesn’t know why the soldiers, their power armor gleaming against the bright sun and the white snow, still trudge forward into the pulse field. Maybe it’s to show the capabilities of the field, to really drive home how important it is they turn it off. They stop and their entire bodies shake, upright, as if rattlers clutched in a baby’s fist. He’s almost afraid if he steps out onto the crackling field, he too will go up in a blaze of pixels towards the sky.

But he does. And he does not get electrocuted.

He knows the smell of a human body flash fried in their power armor husks; it’s similar to the smell of those pieces of meat wasteland hunters try to slyly pass off as molerat or Brahmin. It’s similar to the smell of Mable Henderson’s charred body. The Mr. Handy floats over, letting out an exclamation and immediately going about picking up her body.

Vaultie knows he’s crying again. He doesn’t know what else to do.

\--

Jingwei’s sword comes down inches from Adam’s head. There is live fire all around him, and yet none of it seems to hit him or the General; the Chinese Commandos and Power Armored soldiers are entrapped in battle, but it seems to be choreographed around their movements.

The Lone Wanderer has realized over these months that he is not meant for close quarters combat; if necessary, he can sneak behind someone, but he doesn’t have the pure strength to drive a knife into someone’s spine and if it’s not sharp enough, he knows it won’t cut through the neck in a way that won’t just end up with one man bleeding out and the other full of bullet holes.

He doesn’t know where Benji is, and he wishes he knew where his sergeant was; the man was great close-up, probably knew exactly how to finish Jingwei. Adam’s rifle discharges but the bullet misses, somehow, he doesn’t understand; the General’s sword crackles through the air as it slices horizontally. He immediately feels the cold air it leaves behind as it slices clean through his armor, leaving a bare patch of skin and a thin red line where the sword point just barely nicked skin.

Adam shoots again. This time, it tears flesh from the side of the General’s neck, but still he lunges forward. The gore reminds him of raiders, and the bodies they keep, of ghouls and their insides on the outside, and all he can hear is the sound of warfare around him, screams and shouts and gunfire. Adam’s holding his gun close, and too high, and he finally drops it into the snow as he stumbles back and away from another wild lunge from the general, grabbing his pistol from his holster.

A power-armored soldier falls to his left, and Adam jerks to the side just as the sword comes down where his boot prints now lay in the snow. It throws Jingwei off balance to miss so completely, and he stumbles; instinct takes over, and Adam surges forward, jamming the pistol hard underneath the other man’s jaw so hard his head snaps back before he even shoots.

He only shoots twice before the body collapses; two shots and then the rest of the clip is emptied into the sky, as the General crumples and Adam’s finger is moving automatically, because he was so sure he was going to die.

He drops his gun, and turns around.

“Benji!”

Adam sees the world go still, and it snaps him out of his reverie; he suddenly realizes that this war, this battle, is still fake, always was a fabrication. Out of the corner of his eye, there’s General Chase, wading past the frozen bodies posed in warfare around him, pushing them gently aside like curtains to walk through.

He’s coming for him. Benji’s grin is lopsided as Adam darts over to where he’s standing, the front of his armor splashed with blood and his gun still locked and loaded. “Benji, we—I did it! We did it! The war, we’ve… we’ve won!”

The other man grabs his hand for a vigorous handshake, “It's been an honor working with you. I don't think I've ever seen bravery like that on any battlefield.” And he laughs as he pulls Adam in for a thumping hug, laughing again as he yelps underneath a particularly hard whack, “Hey, you did good. Hopefully, after we mop up the mess in Anchorage, we can get together and have a couple of beers.”

Adam pulls back from the hug, his face twisted in confusion. “What?”

Benji’s eyes are bright, “I’m saying, we can meet up, get a couple of beers. My treat.”

“But I thought,” And Vaultie’s heart is twisting, “I thought this was just… a simulation? This isn’t… it’s not real.”

Benji smiles. He gives Adam’s arm one last pat, almost fondly, and before Adam can say anything else there’s another hand with a vice grip on his other arm, twisting him around. General Chase’s voice is loud, so loud it reverberates through his skull. “This concludes the simulation, and this portion of your training.” Chase begins, and when Adam tries to turn around and see where Benji has gone, he finds that he cannot, rooted exactly in place. He doesn’t know why, but his gut is eating itself, roiling terribly. It was just a simulation. Getting beers—it was a simulation, it was a simulation, it was…

“Am I done?” He hears himself say, interrupting the General, “Is the simulation over?”


	11. Chapter 11

“同志站开，我们正在处理这些帝国主义走狗 !”

Vaultie is vomiting. He is small, and nervous, and he hasn’t felt this weak in months. It’s making his stomach do flips and flops until its virtual contents were begging to be let out.

“No! No!” Braun’s voice is the rough, wizened old man right now, and it is too loud for the small body he is occupying. It rings and echoes in Vaultie’s ears as he stamps his small, mary-jane clad feet. “Do you realize what you’ve done? You’ve triggered the Failsafe! Ruined everything! The subjects will die, and I’ll be stuck here in this hell! Alone!”

Vaultie knows what the Chinese commandos are saying, (“Stand aside, comrade, while we deal with these Imperialist dogs!”) and though they see him as an ally he shirks away from their confident forms that are carving through the defenseless Tranquility Lane residents. Old Lady Dither’s body falls, her mouth curved into a smile. Their shots are numerous and aggressive and over the top but each one finds its way into a body; disciplined, deadly.

The same Chinese soldiers he remembered from Anchorage.

Doc cowers underneath a swing, but the Chinese ignore him in favor of chasing down Martha Simpson, who is cowering behind a dog house.

He wipes bile away from his mouth with the back of his hand; Betty looks expectant, as if Vaultie would willingly go up and talk to her. All he’s focused on is the door.

“You’re just going to blaze past me, head right through the door? I have no one. Nothing. You've destroyed everything that mattered to me!”

Vaultie turns, too much anger to contain in his small body, “Where’s my _father._ ”

“The dog. The _dog_. He’s been here the entire time!” Braun says, disgusted at his thickness, and in reply Doc yelps and skitters out from his playground hiding spot to Vaultie’s side. The door knob reminds him of the feel of the Anchorage briefcases under his palm, hard, cold metal that wavers and jolts.

He turns the knob just as a wet dog’s nose presses against his other hand.

\---

If Vaultie had ever ridden a roller coaster or taken a car just a little too fast over a dipping hill, he would compare the sensation of being pulled out of virtual reality that seemed to squeeze his intestines just behind his belly button similar to that. The probes slide out from his head first, leaving thin marks that just barely dribble a line of blood in their wake; as soon as that is out, Vaultie jolts forward, forcing his arms out of the slowly loosening restraints. The sleeve of his left hand tears; before the pod can do it, he’s yanking the cord from his Pip-boy, and the monitor immediately starts to whine in protest, flatlining and beeping shrilly.

He sits up, panting heavily as he places both hands on either side of the opening machine and _pulls_ ; the grating of mechanizations do not bother him, not when he needs to _get out_ , and _right now_ , and even though it would have taken a second to wait for it to open fully as soon as the opening is large enough for him to wiggle through he slides out like a rat squeezing through a pipe, falling hard on hands and knees on the floor.

The sounds of the pressure releasing on the other pod sounds very far away in his ears, compared to his heart beat and his own ragged wheezing as if he had ran from the Republic of Dave to Andale.

He feels Charon’s presence before anything tangible, and even then it’s just a hand barely ghosting against the back of his shoulders before leaving. “Adam—“

“Adam!”

The Lone Wanderer’s head jerks up as his father climbs out of the virtual reality pod much more gracefully than he had. His face flashes quickly with emotion; relief, anger, fear, and it finally settles on a wide-eyed stare as Charon steps forward and in front of Vaultie’s prone form.

Jame’s hand is not too subtly palming the pistol on his hip. “Adam? Is this a friend of yours?”

“Dad—“ He gasps, and when James takes a concerned step forward Charon takes his own, blocking off Vaultie’s body with his own defensive stance. Adam tends to shortness and James is average; Charon towers over the man. “S’okay,” He finally wheezes when he finds his breath, and reaches out lamely to heel Charon, his fingers just barely brushing against his lower back. “Charon… okay…”

Charon’s body stiffens at the touch, but his face doesn’t falter; James and him stare each other down for a second longer before Charon retreats. It was an automatic reaction to his employer’s vulnerability.

“Who is this? Adam—why are you here? Are you alright?” James finally approaches his son, and his gaze never leaves Charon, even as he’s kneeling down to place careful arms around his doubled-over offspring. He flinches, and a muscle in Charon’s jaw ticks; if he responds in pain, he will eliminate the threat.

“Dad… I’m fine… J-just—“ He gulps in one large breath, and then reaches out; it’s towards Charon, but James is the closest, and he’s supporting him with one arm underneath his own. “Upstairs?”

Father and son walk out, and Charon follows behind. From behind, he notices they both have the same cowlick whorl in the pattern of their hair. They take the stairs in silence, and then they enter the clinic; it’s still in the general disarray that Vaultie had left it in, minus anything useful Charon had scavenged during Vaultie’s time in Tranquility Lane. James seems to notice, but he doesn’t let his gaze linger long, more concerned with guiding his son to the sole chair in the office. “Hey, there. It’s alright. You… don’t be upset.” As soon as Vaultie is seated, James kneels down in front of him, rubbing both of his arms. “I could tell you didn’t want to do any of those things. But you found a way out, in the end, before it… escalated.”

Vaultie feels his gut clench again, and not just because he hasn’t had anything solid to eat and only the intravenous nutrients of the simulator for two days. His father’s eyes are so soft, and though he’s letting himself be comforted by the familiar touch, the soothing tone, he realizes—his father doesn’t _know,_ thinks that this is the worst he’s ever done. Thinks he’s panicking over the chaos he has caused that’s so benign to the actual horrors of the Wasteland…

If he had not been so off-edge because of the virtual reality, if he had been in his suit, if—he’s sure he would have laughed in Braun’s face. Making a child _cry_. Breaking up a marriage. He’s seen corpses left by raiders, long dead and cooled, that had faced worse than that visible through physical modifications alone, let alone the mental implications of such torture, and it was literally child’s play.

“Dad—“

“No, no. Listen. Adam? This is why I wanted you to stay in the Vault.” James says, his hands going from his arms to cup his son’s face, tender but firm to direct his usually wandering eyesight towards him. Charon, having started to busy himself in unpacking Vaultie’s knapsack and laying out his armor, skulking in the corner, stills and watches. Vaultie notices it from the corner of his eyes. “It is dangerous out here. This isn’t the place for you.”

Vaultie looks away, just barely tugging his face away from his father’s stern grasp. “This isn’t the… this isn’t your place, Dad! You’re just a doctor—you could’ve—could’ve died. G-gotten hurt.”

James lets go at his half-hearted squirming, his brow creasing with a light frown. He’s used to his son’s idiosyncrasies, the stuttering, never making eye contact; that doesn’t mean he doesn’t try, especially when he’s frustrated, especially when he’s trying to make a point, though it rarely comes to that. “Well, I didn't expect Dr. Braun to be alive and insane. I thought I'd just find notes, or holotapes. And you’re just a boy, and you’ve come here.” Vaultie’s mouth opens, and James continues, “And you shouldn’t have.”

Something clatters loudly to the ground; they both turn to see Vaultie’s helmet rolling in place on the floor, and Charon gripping the table. James frowns. Vaultie’s eyes don’t leave it’s rocking form, stark on the pristine white tile, even as his father turns back to him. “Listen, son, honey—I’ve got the information I needed, at the very least, and we’re safe. I’ll take you back to Rivet City—“

“Jonas is dead.” Vaultie blurts out, his eyes still focused on the helmet, it’s rocking slowing, the movements becoming smaller and smaller. “And… and so is Almodovar. Floyd. O-officer Mack.”

“You…”

“If I’m just—j-just a kid, then why would you just—“

James cuts him off, quickly, apologetic, explanatory, “That's where you belonged. You were—that was wrong of me, you’re not a boy, you’re a man, an adult, capable of fending for yourself, and you had a good life ahead of you.”

Vaultie’s eyes snap from his helmet up to James, “They killed Jonas. They tried to—th-they. They tried to kill me… Everyone. Amata woke up and they tried to _kill me_.” His words rise, going shrill at the end, thin with panic, gripping the arms of the chair as he leans forward, “And you—you left me, and I would have _died_ , I would have died because you’re just—you care about—you care about that f-fucking water project, more than me.”

“No, no, son,” James voice is thick with emotion, quick to move into action and reach out for Adam, “You must understand. As much as I love you, this project has been my responsibility since long before you were even born—“

When his hand touches Vaultie’s cheek he jerks back, violent enough that his chair moves with the motion, and the table behind them grinds angrily against the ground as Charon pushes like a bull in a china shop towards the two of them. He stops just shy of barreling into James, looming.

He never strikes without explicit command, especially if the protection of his employer would possibly contradict a previous command in some way.

Vaultie’s eyes don’t meet Charon’s. They don’t meet either of them, but he stares past his father, at the far wall.

He doesn’t cry. But the devastation is clear.

Charon flexes his fist, and the leather of his armor creaks in the silence; James turns, eyes wide. “Do you mind? I understand that you must be his bodyguard of some sort, and I don’t think you realize, this is my _son_.”

He flexes his other fist. “I realize.”

“Charon.” Vaultie’s first utterance of his name is an exclamation, the second, an explanation as he deflates in his chair: “Charon is my bodyguard. B-but… I’m capable. I’m good. I’m really good. I’m…” James’ face contorts in realization. “T-the Lone Wanderer. Three Dog? Radio…”

“I’ve heard.” James mutters, quietly. All three fall silent. There is no sound, save the gentle whirring of robobrains puttering around and the sound of a sole virtual reality machine still being run.

Charon breaks the silence by taking two steps back. He picks up Vaultie’s helmet from the floor, buffs the small scuff it acquired in the fall with the heel of his palm, sets it back on the table next to his nicely folded suit. He pulls out his sniper rifle, and places that next to his suit after he reloads the empty gun with a fresh cartridge.

James is the first to really break the silence, “Megaton?”

“Me. That… that was me.” He doesn’t look any happier at the admittance, his fingers fidgeting in the slightly too-large sleeves of the foreign vault suit. “All me.” His voice tapers off to a near whisper.

James heaves a deep breath. He puts a hand on the arm of Vaultie’s chair, just so he can stand from his kneeling position; he takes it slow, exhales again a little more loudly, and Vaultie stares at the floor. His dad is aging. His dad is old and he still feels so, so young.

“What if… what if we go back to the Vault?” He ventures, timidly reaching out for his dad’s pantleg like a small child pulling at coattails. “Just us. The two of us. We’ll go and… a-and they’ll let us back in, right? We can go back home. Back to… how it was. Just us.”

A robobrain rolls past the door. There’s the sound of a gun being reloaded. And then a shotgun. A combat knife is placed, too hard, onto the table.

“Son. I know… this is hard. This is a lot to deal with. But…” He shakes his head, “Too many people have made sacrifices to give up on it now. Your mother... After so many years, I can finally see it through to the end. I can't stop now.”

There’s a low, distant beeping; Braun’s pod must be sending out a distress system. The man has probably really, truly just realized the deafening loneliness he will be facing in the foreseeable feature. Charon had heard one of the pods frequently emit the same low wail.

“Come with me to Rivet City. I want you to be there when we change the world—“

“Dad… I’m not going with you.”

James hesitates. Vaultie’s fists are clenched at his side, fingernails biting into his palm to keep his voice steady.

“Charon, give him my silenced pistol and some ammo.”

James levies his gaze on the ghoul, his face hard. “I don’t want to take your munitions.”

Charon is still retrieving 10 mm ammo from the pack, of course; James isn’t the one with his contract. Vaultie stands, and picks his helmet up from the table, twisting it in his hands to inspect it once over. His father watches him place it onto his head.

“You’ll need it more than us.”

Charon places the gun and ammo against the man’s chest; James’ eyes stray long on his son, and his now obscured face, before he grabs the weapon pushed pointedly against his sternum and collects them in an awkward cradle. As soon as he has them, Charon falls away, and into step next to Vaultie.

His father takes the gun, awkwardly, fumbling with the ammo. Vaultie notices how his father holds the gun with familiarity but fear; there’s no love there, no trust in a firearm. He doesn’t know how his father made it all this way, all alone.

James slides the pistol awkwardly onto the other holster on his hip. Maybe he _should_ go with him. But his father is already stepping towards the door, and there is a hurriedness to his movements, a sudden realization that he had to leave.

“Life out here is so different from the Vault. You know, it's something I never wanted you to face.”

Vaultie watches James, his father, leave for his first son. He doesn’t follow. As soon as the man’s 101 emblazoned vault suit has left his vision his shoulders sag, and he staggers towards a corner of the room, his helmet thumping against the wall.

Charon lets him grieve. He breaks their guns down, for what feels like the millionth time in this vault, cleans each piece, puts them back together.

\--

Charon waits, and waits, and waits. He is good at waiting, has spent an ashamedly (if he had shame) large part of his life in stasis, waiting for orders, acting on the order to wait, waiting for a new master. This isn’t new for him, isn’t hard to do, isn’t taxing in the least on his senses or moral code.

He waits a few hours in front of the pod. When Vaultie’s vitals, written in blocky code on his monitor, come across as consistent if slightly elevated for a continuous amount of time, Charon finally moves. He leaves their packs near the pod (his contract burning a hole through the inner pocket of Adam’s knapsack) and explores the general immediate vicinity. There is little of the way of useful objects. Plenty of pre-war technology, but it is way beyond his narrow scope and, at the looks of things, probably beyond even Vaultie. There are few doors, and some are locked. He scours the overturned clinic, collects the stimpacks and med-x vials and even finds a pristine, sealed bottle of buffout, its contents rattling enticingly in his grasp. Other than that, there is not much. He eats minimally, drinks even less; he wants to consume his immediate rations, so that he will not have to leave his employer here to scavenge and hunt for food.

Mostly, he waits. And he sits in front of the pod, cleaning their guns. Organizing their packs. Counting ceiling tiles.

And thinking, which is rare, because free thought meanders and often finds itself on a forked path towards the bleak future or a landmine laden past. It happens suddenly, letting thoughts wander. Suddenly, Charon’s hands are not focused on the guns in his hands, and he is thinking back. The immediate past, of a warm night and a light breeze to break DC's humidity.

He remembers the sight of Vaultie’s unabashed smile as in an outstretched hand, he cradles, tender, a bug that is small for the wasteland. It’s abdomen is grotesque, too large for its small body.

It crawls up to the tip of his finger, and its back glows. Vaultie is beaming, and it’s not just the faint radiation emitting from the bug, his Pip-boy’s Geiger ticking warningly.

He doesn’t remember the exact words Vaultie said. Something like, “I can’t believe they’re still here,” or, “They’re even more beautiful in real life,”. It didn’t really matter. His eyes were reflecting the sickly glow of the bug, and Charon can’t even remember the color of his eyes, but that they were innocent and he’s under the employ of the savior of the wastes and for a moment, he might have even smiled too, especially when Vaultie has to move his hands so the bug stays on his arm. He shifts them over to Charon, and though grumbling the ghoul relents and holds his own arm out. Vaultie lays his arm on top of Charon’s, and the bug crawls slowly from him to the other.

Even after the firefly had went to his arm, and flew away, Vaultie kept his arm on top of his. Charon distinctly remembers the way his ears were so pink, even in the dim light of the fire, and he has to stop his mind from wandering even further; instead, he just waits.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I used some of the actual conversation from FO3 for James and Braun, lightly modified and added to where it permitted.


	12. Chapter 12

Vaultie can’t stand the pods, so they go upstairs to Smith Casey’s Garage almost immediately. And they stay there. They don’t have the supplies for it, and are lean on food almost immediately. Charon hadn’t skinned and fileted the mole rats initially after they arrived, and he wants to kick himself for the lapsed judgement, the laziness and the dulling of his sharp survival instincts. Their corpses lie, rotting, underneath the sealed stairwell that leads into the Vault. They don’t have enough food to dawdle and still make it to Megaton, the closest point of civilization.

But Charon follows. That’s what he does; he follows, blindly, without emotion, because to show frustration with his own stupidity or a strange ache at the silence causes more problems and solves nothing. Vaultie doesn’t care. He lies on his bedroll and stares at the ceiling. He fiddles with his Pip-boy, and tries to program things on it. He pulls out books from their packs, dense medical textbooks and Chinese stealth guides and pre-war celebrity rags about politicians, and flips through them restlessly. Mostly, he listens to the radio, and sleeps.

Charon goes out and hunts, when they're finally down to the snack cakes. He lies a row of fragmentation mines, rationalizing that a lack of food will kill them faster than anything else; when they had arrived, the dust had been so thick on the floor, save where James' footsteps had landed, that he doubts Vaultie has any worries. There’s mole rat jerky hanging from the rafters and he fries ants up crispy and greasy in their own pheromone sacs.

Vaultie picks at it. Doesn’t speak. The silence is normal for them but hangs too thick in the air. Charon could choke on this. It’s not their usual silence, but oppressive. For the first time, he has free time without Vaultie buzzing around, fiddling with his robot butler, asking Charon to reach things he’s squirreled away on too high shelves, trying to shove magazines in his hand he doesn’t have the eyesight to read.

Charon paces. Vaultie doesn’t stir.

On the 5th day Charon crouches down next to Vaultie, arms resting on his knees. He pointedly takes his wrist in hand. Vaultie’s eyebrows furrow as he counts his pulse fluttering under his fingers and times it to the clock on his Pip-boy on the opposite arm.

“Well,” Charon grunts, “That’s abnormal.”

Vaultie pushes himself up to a sitting position, eyes going wide. He lifts up his Pip-boy, flicking to the vitals screen to check his own heartbeat. “Wh-what?”

Charon gestures to him, drawling, “Contrary to popular belief, you actually seem to be alive.”

He never pressed. The Lone Wanderer never opened up. It had never been in Charon's contract to keep up the mental well-being of his employers. But Adam—he’s capable, and there’s a sense of camaraderie, there. He orders, but he orders in a way that’s dully familiar, and his protectiveness towards him… something scratches at the back of Charon’s mind, something familiar but forgotten. Ghouls forgot things often; it was hard not to, when you were in your mid-two hundreds.

His face falls under Charon’s stare; it is unblinking but it is not unkind. Vaultie feels his gut curl with shame as Charon continues, “I can continue to hunt. But water will become difficult.” A pause, “I would suggest moving soon if you want to continue living.”

Vaultie exhales, short, almost daring to be amused. “Are you… gonna carry me? Or what?”

“If I must.”

A shy smile touches Vaultie’s lips. “To Rivet City?”

He shakes his head. “To Megaton. Or Underworld.”

Home is the unspoken word between the two of them; and more unspoken is that Charon cannot bring him to Rivet City. Couldn’t willingly cause that sort of pain. Wouldn’t want to.

Vaultie exhales, long and slow, and nods. “I… yeah. Okay. Maybe tomorrow.”

Charon reaches out, to—grab Vaultie’s arm, maybe, but his eyes catch the movement, and he stops, because—

He is his employer, and he flexes his fingers and retracts his hand.

\--

There are four men sitting around a folding table, its legs wobbling as they lean on it, place their half-filled drinks down, throw another chip into the pile. Only one has his peaked cap still on his head; another rests atop of the .32 in the middle of the table. There’s a medal there, also, and it doesn’t look like any of the ones hanging from the breasts of their coats.

The radio in the corner sounds far off, distant, and all it plays is _mother superior jumped the gun, mother superior jumped the gun, mother superior jumped the gun_ , again, and again, over and over.

Glimpses of conversation float in on the cigar smoke hanging in a haze around the room. “They think it’s bad here. But have you seen what they have been doing to their own people—“It is indistinguishable which one is talking. “To their neighbors? Dissenters are shot in the back of the head like dogs.”

With that, the man with the hat on takes the gun from the center of the table, cocks it. He aims, and fires.

Charon wakes up. He turns over on his side; Vaultie is across the room from him, awake, his face bathed in the low green light of his Pip-boy. Charon stands, and grabs his shotgun from his side, heading towards the door to take early watch. He doesn’t know why he is having these dreams. Doesn’t know why they’re coming back, now, of all times.

\--

Their spoons thoroughly scrape the Scram tins clean. It’s their last one, and Vaultie is finally eating. It helps that he’s also nursing a drink, some distastefully warm whiskey Charon had found on his initial scavenging of the Vault below.

“Do you know… why I bought your contract?”

Charon’s spoon nearly stabs itself through the thin, worn metal of the tin can as he tries to scrape the last bit of gelatinous meat. It has been months since they had broached this subject, months since they had gotten over the period of time where Vaultie had asked him nervous, jumbled questions and instead they had settled into their amiable quiet, and light chatter. He takes a moment to answer, grumbling as he thinks. “… no.”

Vaultie nearly speaks, but Charon, surprisingly, continues: “You’ve been competent since I have started traveling with you. A former soldier.” His eyebrows rise up, and Vaultie feels himself flush, inexplicably, as Charon’s rarely used voice grates onward, “I see no reason for my presence other than pack mule.”

Vaultie opens his mouth, then closes it, licking his lips. Charon looks away. “I knew…" His voice cracks, "You wouldn’t leave.” Vaultie looks ashamed. “Couldn’t leave.”

And there it was. Charon knew he ached for affirmation with every action he did, every good deed; he’s pieced together by now, the banishment from the vault, the abandonment from his father. Something with the virtual reality pods, and Anchorage. He blinks slowly. His employer is ashamed, but Charon does not understand why. He has had employers whose orders made his skin crawl, orders that had caused him to push any bits of humanity down.

Charon clears his throat, to speak, but Vaultie continues, “I’m not _supposed_ to—I am supposed to be the savior of the wastes, I’m supposed to—you’re supposed to do good? Just to do good, for g-good’s sake? Right?”

“What do you wish for me to say?”

Vaultie looks wounded up at him. “I don’t… I don’t want to make you say anything.”

There isn’t much for him to say. Really, nothing for him to say. They are men of few words, for different reasons. So he reaches out, a somewhat comforting, hesitant touch.

Vaultie turns. And it’s so sudden, a split-second decision, and he leans up. His lips miss, and press to the corner of Charon’s mouth, and the ghoul’s entire body goes rigid, startling him into inaction. Vaultie pulls back like he’s been burnt, wide-eyed and flushed. His face flashes with embarrassment and he scrambles to stand, shaking from the short burst of adrenaline, heading immediately to his bedroll on the far end of the garage.

“S-sorry.”

Charon says nothing, his expression carefully blank. Before he can say anything, or stand, Vaultie turns, hand out. “Don’t. I’m—that was. Out of line. We’ll head out tomorrow. I’m not. I’m not _bad_ —“ He shuts his mouth before he can babble on. Charon’s muscles burn from the hold of the command. An explicit stay there. He rolls his shoulders, tries to get the ache out of them before it settles there. Ignore the heat that's already settled on the corner of his mouth.

True to his word, they pack up and leave the next day. Vaultie is silent.

They arrive in Megaton after walking non-stop through the day and through the night.

\--

Vaultie is screaming, and screaming in his sleep. If he screams any more, every raider in a hundred foot radius will crawl out of the wood work and pull their intestines out through their throats with a rusty combat knife, so Charon does the only thing he can do; he crawls on top of his employer to pin down his limbs and clamp a hand over his mouth. His breath is hot and wet against his weathered palm. Predictably, Vaultie awakes almost instantly, before his hand can even clamp fully down, his entire body jolting upward, limbs thrashing. He is physically smaller than Charon, but his strength is tremendous, especially in the throes of fear. It’s only Charon’s sheer height and bulk that he has on him that keeps him on top of the other as he hisses out quiet shushing noises between clenched teeth. In the distance, a dog barks loudly. Vaultie’s movement slow, then still, his chest heaving from exhaustion.

“You were screaming.” Charon explains, his eyes going out into the darkness of the night warily as he removes his hand from Vaultie’s mouth. They are lit only by the light of the stars above and the satellites that still, to this day, lazily orbit around the earth, blinking through the atmosphere. Even in the dark, he can see the weariness on his face, slack after the immense terror. “I apologize.”

Vaultie has to take a moment to collect his bearings, blinking up owlishly. There’s a quiet fear in his eyes, but it’s not directed at Charon—he pushes himself up halfway on his forearms. Charon grunts, realizing he’s still on the other, and pulls back.

“Are we in danger?”

“Not at present.”

Vaultie licks his lips and scoots his body back. They’ve taken sanctuary underneath a simple row boat that had been propped up against a blackened stump. Someone had dragged a mattress underneath. It had been a rest stop for someone at some point, though how long abandoned neither knew. Vaultie reaches blindly out to his side; Charon palms the helmet and hands it to his employer wordlessly.

He takes it, his forehead creasing. “Wake me again if it happens,” He mumbles, sliding the helmet on.


	13. Chapter 13

They barely touch down at Megaton, having nothing of value to unload, before they leave once more. Vaultie goes back to Underworld, restless and without purpose. They take to the Metro tunnels and burrow further into the inner city. Though they had thoroughly emptied some of the tunnels, Vaultie had suddenly decided to take it upon himself to cleanse every nook and cranny of ferals and raiders and mutants and Talon Company.

Georgetown. Vernon square. Seward Square. They kill, and kill, and kill. Vaultie sleeps sparingly and Charon even less. Tulip has to get Quincey to bring in more bullets, and they buy Lucky Harith’s entire inventory of shotgun shells and .308s, and still they run out. So Vaultie buys them off of Brotherhood patrols, and scavenges them off of corpses. Sniper rounds are hard to come by, so they raid generally untouchable, impenetrable areas: the Alexandria Arms building, and the National Guard Depot, nearly suicidal in their fury as they cleared out building by building, block by block.

Crazy Wolfgang holds out the handful of bullets he has, and the Lone Wanderer presses an abundance of caps into his outstretched hand.

“Thanks for the business, kid. I’ll tell the others to keep an eye out for the ammo you’re lookin’ for.” He says, handing the bullets over as he counts the caps twice and places them in a pouch on his Brahmin grazing on weeds nearby. “We’re doing real well, lately—I tell you after you settled those super weirdos fightin’, Uncle Roe started building things up around Canterbury, big fence and all?”

Vaultie is silent, but silence has never stopped Wolfgang from talking before, “And we got a few more permanent merchants in. We might be a town before you know it. Give Megaton a run for their money.”

Vaultie nods.

Wolfgang laughs. “Anyway, I’m talking your ears off, eh? You two are doing good work out there. Lookin’ worse for wear, but that’s damn expected, considering the carnage.”

Vaultie blinks at him. There are bags under his wide eyes. “Yes,” is all he says, and it doesn’t even make sense. Crazy Wolfgang just laughs, and reaches out to ruffle the kid’s hair.

He stops, when Charon takes a pointed step forward, grunting in a way that almost sounds like a growl. His own body guard adjusts the grip on his gun. Wolfgang’s smile grows wider, but hardens. “Like I said. Nice doing business with you.”

\--

Charon watches the patrol circle around from behind the crumbling highway divider. Talon Company armor is, in his modest opinion, beautiful. It is sleek and heavy, with stripes of white paint raggedly dragged across the breast plate. It looks just as good heavily worn, dinged with bullets and half of the paint scraped off, singed and abused. It is beautiful because it is incredibly protective.

Charon wants a set. He watches the man’s head explode and the short, brief flash of Vaultie’s muzzle go off a few paces away. The body crumples.

He’s seen Talon Company armor take one of Vaultie’s bullets right to the chest, and though the impact sent the man ass over tea kettle it had buried itself deep into the armor, never actually managed to pierce through. Silence follows. These are the best raids, when the men don’t realize that the shot was closer than it sounded, that their guard is now down. He senses his employer nearby before the taps on his shoulder come.

Charon has been enjoying the killing because they don’t talk. Vaultie commands, and orders, and Charon follows. The ghoul quietly vaults over the concrete median and crouches, picking his footsteps carefully amongst the rubble to avoid any missteps or untoward noises. He palms a grenade on his hip. Action is easy. Action is easy to accomplish. He does not need to think, has no time to think about anything past the here and now. And right now, he’s quickly calculating the distance he can throw this pineapple, if he can lob it over the half walls of the Talon outpost, where would the center be for the best blast radius coverage.

He’s ten feet away from the corpse when he takes the grenade from his belt, pulls the pin, and throws; there are no shouts of “Grenade!”, which means the light noise of metal plunking down had gone unnoticed, and it makes the ensuring explosion all the sweeter. There are screams, and shouts, and as the first man staggers out with a missile launcher balanced on his shoulder Vaultie’s rifle sings and his head explodes. The world moves in slow motion and Charon is unholstering the shotgun on his back as the second man filters out from the narrow opening; his temple is bleeding, and then his head also explodes, and the third man out is hit right in the gut by a parry of shotgun shells.

All in all, a fire fight of thirty seconds, and five men are dead.

The problem with the way they fight now, nine months after Charon had first been hired, is that they are _too good_. They are fast, and deadly. Less than a minute, less than a third of the time it took to make a box of Blamco mac and cheese, and five human lives, with thoughts and hopes and dreams, were snuffed out irreversibly. When Vaultie reloads, Charon shoots, and they funnel them through small areas where their heads and extremities are picked off one by one.

There’s not enough fighting and too much time, and once more, they’re left in silence and inaction.

Charon starts to frisk the corpses for ammo and chems. Vaultie shifts to visible, standing upright in the small camp. There are bunk beds pushed against the wall of a derelict building, and rickety shelving with scarce supplies. They had been encamped here for a while, from the looks of it, but that wasn’t hard when one of the members wields a missile launcher.

Something light hits the side of Charon’s face; the ghoul twists, only to see a crumpled pack of cigarettes at his feet. He picks it up, glancing over at Vaultie. He knows he smokes. Doesn’t usually let him indulge often; cigarettes are too precious and fetch a sum more constant than the price of caps, and the smoke trail is too obvious in the wastes. Vaultie’s helmet is pointedly turned away from him, as if not acknowledging that he had just whipped a pack of cigarettes at his head. He grumbles, picks it up, tucks it into his armor.

It’s not until they’ve long left the outpost, Charon’s shoulders now gleaming black, that he realizes it was probably an apology. When he takes watch for the night he smokes one, indulges in the painful draw when his lungs constrict against it.

\--

They had tried to approach a group of three ghouls in a friendly manner—that’s how Vaultie approached everyone that wasn’t flagrantly high and aggressive, wary but still overtly friendly, his palms raised upward. Charon couldn’t decide if they were starting to be overcome by feral urges or were in the throes of water lust that made even the most charitable man a raving asshole; they didn’t even have real weapons, just baseball bats and brass knuckles, but they wouldn’t stop trying to fight the two of them even after Vaultie had insisted with a cracking voice they didn’t want their found fridge of water, they just wanted trade and good conversation.

One of the bats swung for Vaultie’s head and before Charon could shoot, his employer’s pistol had gotten the ghoul between the eyes. The Lone Wanderer didn’t look good when he got spread too thin. It’s not that either of them hadn’t met plenty of murderous, terrible people. But all of the nervous babbling and silence, Charon has learned in the months with him, eventually turned to a breaking point, and something as small as Three Dog asking over the radio, _“What kind of Dad leaves his kid in an underground bunker?”_ or a needlessly hostile group and something would click and Vaultie would just—

Charon eventually had to turn away. He didn’t care much about gore—he was a walking example of it himself, one of those super mutant bags of limbs and organs that just hadn’t been deconstructed yet—but he didn’t like seeing the kid beat anyone’s head in like an overripe watermelon with a baseball bat.

\--

He’s not paying attention and that’s the only reason Vaultie can find for being bowled over suddenly; crouching generally keeps Vaultieʼs mass low and centered, but what feels like a Chrysus has just hit him, throwing him tumbling down the small hilltop he had perched himself on with his sniper rifle. This isnʼt like him. He has the perception of a highly irradiated Megaton crow, but somehow someone had snuck up on him, and as he falls he jerks his head towards the source of the hit--

His eyes feel like they’re bouncing in his skull as he tumbles down, limbs wildly trying to stop himself from falling completely. It happens in a split second, the hit, the fall-- all he can see is a tall, imposing figure, and then sky, ground, sky, ground--

Heʼs going to bruise.

Thereʼs no air left in his lungs as he lands on his stomach, and though his reflexes are quick to scramble to his hands and knees, then his feet, somebody else was quicker. One large hand grabs both of his wrists suddenly, inexplicably, holding them together with a bone-crushing tightness while the other hand went for the back of his neck. A knee dug into his lower back.

The Lone Wandererʼs head spins. His breathing is shallow, labored. He can hear it in surround sound in the helmet of his stealth suit.

The hand on his lower neck reaches just a tiny bit upward, fingers easily finding the clasp to his helmet. It let out a hiss as it disengaged itself from the suit. “Y-you. I uh. I have caps--”

The hand roughly yanked his helmet off, and Vaultieʼs forehead thudded against the ground, his dusty curls spilling over his eyes. “O-okay. So you donʼt want caps. Thatʼs fine. I got a great sniper rifle up there, uhm, really pristine. I learned how to maintain guns in the Vault so it works great and itʼs well-oiled and--”

As the words spill out of his mouth, a sudden sinking feeling dawns on him; he’s been in trouble, sure, but he might _really_ be in trouble. This man might steal his armor and slit his throat and—

Distantly, above the sound of his heart hammering in his ears, he hears the roar of something feral. The body above him jerks. It’s split seconds; the noise happens again, and in that moment chills shoot down his spine and he realizes he’s going to have to fight a reaver when the weight on top of him is thrown off.

The Lone Wanderer raises his head, sweaty curls obscuring his vision. Charon has tackled the behemoth of a raider to the ground, and his bloodied fists rise and fall rhythmically. “ _Fucker_ ,” He’s heard feral ghouls speak before, and this is eerily similar. It’s entrancing; for two people fighting to the death, the raider isn’t fighting back much, and Vaultie realizes as he digs his fingers into the ground to push himself up that the man is already dead.

“Charon.”

“ _Charon_.” Vaultie says, finding some steel to his voice, but it wavers at the end. Charon’s shoulders shake, and his fists stop mid-air, as if suspended by an outside entity. They tremble. “Stop.”

The ghoul exhales, rolling his shoulders, once, twice. “You were in danger.”

“I know. I’m not—not anymore.” He says, quickly, scrambling to his feet to walk over to Charon. He turns his head as the Lone Wanderer approaches, but he doesn’t have to look at his face to know what happened. Blood is gushing from the ripped open throat of the raider, hot spurts of it coming out to the slow tune of the man’s dying heartbeat. Vaultie sucks in a sharp breath. “I-it’s… it’s fine—“

“Please let me put my fists down.” Charon grunts. Vaultie mumbles something and Charon is quick to let an arm drop; the other he uses to wipe his mouth roughly against the crook of his elbow.

“It’s fine… don’t worry.”

“I am not dangerous.”

“I didn’t—“

“What I did was necessary. I am not feral. I did what had to be done in the moment, to eliminate the threat as quickly as possible.” It’s the largest amount of words Charon has said in a long while, and probably the most per second as they tumble out in stilted staccato. “I am not feral, and as long as you are my employer I am here to protect you.” Vaultie touches Charon’s shoulder; it’s not a hesitant gesture.

“It’s fine.”

\--

Vaultie pauses as they sit underneath a bridge, fiddling with his Pipboy. It is late at night, and he’s still awake, can’t fall asleep, screams every time he does. So he listens to the radio, and perches somewhere obnoxious like some bird so that his legs strain too much to ever accidentally doze off. They’re tucked underneath a highway and on top of a five car pile-up, and Charon wishes Vaultie realized how much two hundred and change years meant for aching bones compared to his spry 19.

He’s fiddling with his Pip-boy when he pushes himself up, staring off as if concentrating. When Charon shifts, he turns and clicks his speakers on, “Listen to this.”

The voice is female, and sporting a heavy Chinese accent: _“Greetings to the oppressed masses from the peace-loving peoples of China! All peace-loving peoples must join together to stop the war of aggression being waged by the Wall Street gang!”_

Charon’s frown twitches as the woman continues, _“Why do you continue to send your boys to die for your capitalist masters? Your boys are dying on the Alaskan front and all for nothing.”_ Vaultie’s fingers flex out, almost automatic, almost turning the knob to _off_ , but he continues to listen to the broadcast. _“Bring them home before it's too late. The gang of Wall Street fat cats and their Washington war-monger puppets have plunged the world into war to line their own…”_

Sharp static emits from Vaultie’s speakers. The boy nods, slow, almost as if trying to find a tempo to the noise. “This is… it’s something we can do.” It dawns on him. “I bet Three Dog would say… something. I bet there’s… there’s communists nearby. We can do something good. Maybe help them. Maybe there are—they have captives, or we can let the communists know the war is over, o-or we can find things to help others with. ” He taps his Pip-boy speaker, unsure if it’s his own technology or the other end of the broadcast. It comes back with seemingly little explanation:

_“Do you think your leaders would keep you safe when the bombs fall? You will die while the Wall Street gang and their hangers-on live like kings and--”_

Charon grunts noncommittally as the station dissolves into hard static again, turning away from Vaultie. “Wouldn’t count on anyone being there. Pre-recorded. Pre-war. Happened often, on both sides.”

Vaultie watches Charon pick at molerat hairs from the night’s dinner from between his teeth. “Really?”

Charon tenses, rolls his shoulders. “Yes.”

Vaultie doesn’t ask any more questions.

\--

Charon holds tight to Dogmeat’s collar; the dog is straining as hard as he can, letting out a low, quiet whine as he struggles and nearly chokes himself against the restraint. Charon’s hand does not loosen. He leans over Vaultie, who is crouched down and centering the scope of his sniper rifle.

In the distance, a large yao gui snuffles at the ground. Charon leans forward more, careful not to bump into his employer’s back. “Wind’s blowing west.”

“Got it,” Vaultie barely mumbles, exhaling slow. The shot rings out; Charon lets go of Dogmeat’s collar, and the dog is already jumping up and over the rocks they had taken refuge behind, braying like a hound from hell for the wounded monster.

It’s in the split second of letting go of the worn leather collar and leaning forward that Charon realizes he’s too close. When they go out hunting, Vaultie doesn’t wear his stealth suit. Charon can smell his hair, and the sweat he knows is rolling down his neck in the desert sun and catching in the collar of his worn Vault suit. It’s not pleasant and it’s not entirely unpleasant, either, but it’s very human, very personal, and Charon recalls how ghouls in the 9th Circle would drunkenly tease the occasional human that wandered in with how delicious they smelled.

He wants to crawl somewhere warm, and safe; he wants to crawl into that smell, and sleep there for a long, long time.

By the time Charon comes back into himself Vaultie is already ahead of him. He snaps to and springs up onto his feet, his shotgun locked and loaded. Dogmeat is vicious, and precise; the Yao gui’s neck fur is already matted with freely spurting blood, and its pained roars are garbled with blood.

“We’re eating good tonight.” Vaultie says with a short, relieved laugh, as Dogmeat runs towards them, his muzzle coated thoroughly red. Charon doesn’t know why, but his hand twitches over the trigger. Vaultie is too tired to notice.


	14. Chapter 14

It’s subtle, but Charon starts to realize they are following something. He knows the habits of a tracking soldier anywhere.

Vaultie often checks his Pip-boy, if only to tune his internal radio, but Charon catches a glimpse of the map from the corner of his eye. When he turns, it is gone.

They’re not heading towards Rivet City and they’re not leaving the city, either.

\--

The ferals don’t bother him unless he’s with a human; and generally, if Charon is with a smoothskin, they are his employer and he would be cracking the skull of the ferals if they didn’t target him regardless. Non-feral ghouls, on principal, avoided their hunch-backed, animalistic cousins. It was similar to how people avoided hospital wards they were a reminder of their imminent decline and demise, a walking, shuffling stigma, their milky eyes and misshapen faces peering at them through radiated smog and the darkness of the metro with eerie familiarity.

He’s sure Vaultie has no aversion to hospitals, or graveyards, or anything reckoning of death; and though Charon could not care less to trudge waist deep through corpses himself, he would never willingly choose to live amongst ferals. (Something, in the back of his mind, itches, as if trying to remember—maybe, at one point, he had a fear, some sort of superstition, but its long gone by now.) Vaultie is trusting of the ways of the universe, too trusting. His wrist is limp and his visor is bashfully averting downward as Roy Philips shakes his hand. “I'll be damned. Good job kid! I was willing to unleash the Ferals and kill all those bigots. Guess I don't have to now.”

Vaultie lets out a too-nervous laugh, and Roy bullies onward, letting go of his hand to grab something from his side. He doesn’t notice the way Charon twitches for his shotgun. “Here's a little something for your troubles… it'll help you deal with our Feral brethren if you meet any. _”_

If Azrukhal was a snake than Roy Phillips is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, bleating about equality as he stared hungrily at the tall walls and the decadence dripping down the ruined stonework. Charon trusts him as far as he could throw him. Most old war ghouls could never profess any innocence, not after two centuries and change and the immediate struggle of surviving after the bombs. But Roy had blood on his teeth, had it caked under his fingernails, him and his dirty scientist left-hand man and the timid woman with the convictions of a girl on his other side.

Roy presses the mask into Vaultie’s hand to get him to take it, and as soon as he has somewhat of a grip on it Roy is whistling towards Bessie Lynn to follow; Charon watches the two of them leave. When he turns back around, he’s staring at the back of Vaultie’s head, and his hands gingerly peeling the mask over his too-large helmet.

He turns; if Charon even reacted with surprise, he would have flinched. The size of it stretched over the helmet and the wax paper stitched over the eyeholes to give the wearer’s eyes a cloudy look makes the mask dip sharply into a morbid, uncanny valley that even makes his leathery skin prickle. The dull orange eyes never blink, the mouth never moves.

“W-well?”

Charon turns around, towards the door, and Vaultie is following on his heels. “I feel friendlier towards you already.” He deadpans.

His employer makes a small noise, something strange and embarrassed and muffled by too many layers now. “I’m… not. This isn’t…”

He doesn’t understand, why this kid helped Roy, the way he gravitates towards ghouls, and he’s sure it’s more indicative of something terribly flawed and fucked up about his employer that has yet to surface in his relatively short time with him. It is not in his contract to be conversational, however, and he doesn’t have to explain himself, doesn’t have to coddle the boy.

Vaultie brushes by him, only glancing over his shoulder with orange eyes to make sure Charon is following before going the opposite way Roy and his small ragtag team are heading. He still does this, though it has become less frequent; Charon always follows. Even straight into trouble, or in this case, following the curve of the metro into a large group of ferals. They squat, backs hunched, their spines knobby and raised; Charon feels his sinuses prickle when he takes in a breath, tastes that tell-tale copper twang sticking hot in the back of his throat as they approach the barrels of radiated goo that make up the hub of the feral activity. He lifts his shotgun.

“No,” Vaultie says, quickly, and Charon lowers his gun, though he closes the small gap between them in two quick strides. He heels next to the other’s side.

“I would not recommend trusting that mask in close quarters.”

Vaultie shakes his head, and doesn’t slow, even as the feral closest to them turns, and slowly rises to its feet. “He gave his word—“

The feral cocks its head, and staggers forward. Charon can hear Vaultie’s mouth snap shut through his helmet. It staggers forward, and Vaultie stops in place. He is terrified; Charon can see it in the tremor of his hands at his side.

The feral sniffs the air, swaying forward erratically until it nearly touches the Frankenstein’s monster mask on Vaultie’s face. When it is merely inches away, the feral stops—and belches in his face.

Charon’s shoulders shake with silent laughter as Vaultie watches the feral bob and weave back towards the more irradiated outlet of the metro. His hands are still shaking, but he glances over his shoulder at Charon, nervous laughter bubbling up in his throat.

\--

“The sun! It burns!”

Charon seems to flinch at the wails, but Vaultie almost looks peaceful.

“Why does it burn? Why have we put the sun into a jar? And what did we do with that jar? We broke it all over our little world...”

They had heard him first; a Preacher perched on the open second floor of a townhome, spotlight shining behind him like an actor on the stage. His voice is booming, frenzied, dipping in pitch and intensity with no real rhyme or reason; he stresses words that shouldn’t, screeches articles and pronouns, dissolves into sobs and then snaps back with no more than a hiccup.

Charon doesn’t know how he still has his voice, or how it has projected so well. Vaultie had spotted a wastelander, looking ragged and crouched down as small as possible on the other side of the militarized strip of alleyway. So they were going to save him, as they were apt to do, except Vaultie had stopped just out of eyesight, just to listen to the man proselytizing.

“He makes sense… in a way.”

Charon blanches, “No, he doesn’t.”

Vaultie’s shoulders rise defensively. “N-not… I said in a way. A way. A certain—a certain way.” He mutters, almost huffing as he scoots back against the wall of the brownstone they’re sitting under, the bottoms of his shoes scuffing against the dirt on the ground.

“Trees! So many trees! To the north! But be careful... the trees... are deadly, and the trees too will be consumed in the belly of the great fat worm!”

The man keeps talking, shouting, babbling out to the near empty alleyway. Just a scared shitless wastelander, and a giant ghoul and his employer he hasn’t seen yet. Charon turns his face towards Vaultie, and he does the same. Charon notices the dark circles under his eyes, even as he averts his eyes, turns his face away and starts to unshoulder the sniper rifle on his back and get ready to venture into the alleyway.

He doesn’t realize what he’s said until his head gives a warning throb: “Are you sure?”

Adam slides the visor of his helmet back down. “I’m… yeah. Course. M’fine. Hah. W-we gotta save that guy, stop the crazy guy… you know.” He mumbles, exhaling slow as his face is obscured. He shifts from sitting, to his knees, and as soon as his feet are flat on the ground and his ass is off the rubble his form shudders and then disappears in thin air. “I’ll take this one alone.”

He knocks on the side of the brick building they’ve leaned against. _Wait_. Charon says nothing, just looks away.

“And in the worm we will find salvation, and in salvation we will find the doors of the dogs! The dogs! The dogs won’t stop barking, can you hear them? Mooing like that? Will we ever find peace, here in the wasteland, this world that I have destroyed with my own han--”

The shot rings out, and rings true, as it always does. Charon releases the breath he hadn’t realized he had been holding. Vaultie walks out not long after; he can see the shimmer before he hears the tapping of his knuckles against the brick.

\--

The dog hunches over in front of them. It’s maw is covered in blood. He has fur, which is different than the usual braying hounds they see out in the wastes, bald from radiation.

Vaultie doesn’t lower his gun. There were no animals in the vault. He’s only seen aggressive dogs, hunched over, but their teeth are bared. This is different. He’s hunched and his tail is tucked slightly and his ears aren’t pressed back flat.

“Charon? Do you… uh, know dogs?”

“Not hostile.” He simply grunts back. No other answer, nothing personal given; Vaultie wonders, vaguely, if Charon had a dog pre-war, or some other time, or maybe worked with them. Had a guard dog like some of the raiders do, the same snarling, bald animals, just as crazy and unpredictable as their masters.

This dog just watches.

Vaultie lowers his rifle, slowly, and then gently places it on the ground. He approaches the dog like he does with all other unknowns, palms out, quiet, gentle.

“Hey there.”

The dog’s ears perk, and then he cocks his head. Vaultie does the same, tilting his head, still slowly walking forward.

“Are you hostile?”

The dog cocks its head again, getting down real low, rump in the air.

“Hey buddy—”

The dog makes a noise—it’s not snarling, or the snapping of jaws, but a sound that Vaultie would distinctly describe onomatopoeically as _awooowooowoo_ , as it shook its head and wiggled its rear, tail wagging wildly. He stops, and cocks his head, and the dog does the same.

Charon grunts, then sighs, and he crosses swiftly to Vaultie. The dog momentarily backs off, but Charon is quick, and he’s only in their space long enough to press something on the side of Vaultie’s helmet before backing off in one fluid movement. The visor on his stealth suit folds up, (and, Vaultie wonders, how long has Charon been paying attention to him to notice what to press--) and suddenly the dog’s tail is wagging harder, and his head is on straight now.

“Dogs are stupid.” Charon explains, calmly, as the dog finally leans in and sloppily licks Adam’s exposed face, from chin to forehead. He yelps, and the dog yelps, and Charon is trying so hard not to smile he can feel his skin crack around the edges, even though Vaultie can’t see him, being behind him and having a face full of dog. Some of the amusement leaks into his usual deadpan tone: “Didn’t realize you were fully human. And you probably stink like a ghoul at this point.”

Vaultie reaches out, buries his exposed fingertips in the dog’s fur and scratches. That’s what they did in the books he read in the vault, right? The dog scoots closer, his tongue lolling out, and Vaultie has to squirm away in order to avoid any more licks; the dog’s breath smells like blood, and something rotting. “I… I do not stink.”

Charon grunts, noncommittally. Vaultie’s fingers find something around the dog’s neck—a collar, and when he runs his fingers over it he finds a dangling charm on it. He twists the collar around the dog’s neck to read it; hand stamped in the tin are the words ‘DOGMEAT’.

“Dogmeat.”

“If you wish—“

“No, n-no! His name…” Vaultie tilts the small medallion towards Charon, though it’s so small and mostly covered by fur and the ghoul is too far away to even begin reading it. “Dogmeat.”

Dogmeat’s ears have perked at the repetition of his name. He yaps loudly, looking eager, awaiting a command, a treat, a _good boy_. Vaultie laughs, and says his name again, ruffles his ears.

\--

The ghouls, dressed up so nice in their scavenged civilian clothes, part like the red sea before Moses as the Lone Wanderer stalks through Tenpenny towers; and he is the wrath of God, almost, truly faceless and seething with rage. The blood thick and coagulated on his knees, on his forearms belie any sort of innocent preconception the ghouls had of the curly-haired, chubby faced kid.

And still, even staring into the belly of the beast, Roy smiles.

“Nice pile of bodies in the storage room. You're … you’re proud of yourself, aren't you?”

Roy laughs, short and barking. “Ah, welcome back, smoothskin. We had an, ah, ‘disagreement’—“

Vaultie is short, shorter than most pre-war ghouls; maybe that’s why Roy had felt so flippantly safe, or maybe it was the fact that Vaultie spoke quietly, and walked with even softer footsteps.

His body hits the wallpapered wall, the length of the Lone Wanderer’s sniper rifle shoved underneath his chin, forcing his head back. Charon jumps to attention, his shotgun in his hands in record time. Roy’s eyes widen, roving from Adam’s impassive visor to Charon’s grim face.

“Disagreement?” Vaultie hisses, jostles his gun against the relatively soft skin of Roy’s throat. The ghoul growls, and the sound continues as Vaultie jolts the rifle against him to punctuate each word. “He. Did. Nothing. _Wrong_.”

“I don’t have to justify myself to _you_ ,” He wheezes against the metal slowly crushing his windpipe, “Or any other smoothskin.”

When he says it, he looks at Charon, almost sneers. As if Charon was now a smoothskin by association, or maybe he was trying to rally his last point of hope. He doesn’t care—doesn’t hold a flag for either side, frankly, his only allegiances to his employer, but the notion of it could almost make him laugh.

“Close the door, Charon.” He is not stuttering, and his hesitations are so brief to be unnoticeable. He’s fallen into his commanding role, shifted entirely into the persona, and Charon’s body is relieved to obey to the command, simple and direct. The door to Tenpenny’s old suite closes, hard enough that the 10mm on the ionic pillar outside clatters to the floor.

\--

The first thing they notice is how quiet it is once they leave the metro. And they both notice it; Charon leans in, the way he does when he’s trying to strain his subpar hearing, and Vaultie stands stock still so not even his own silent footsteps would bother his concentration.

There is nothing. No gunfire, no mutants grunting nearby, not a single bark or howl. There is a slight wind, but not enough to howl through the incline that lead to the metro tunnel, and in the distance a crow sounded out in the sky.

Vaultie straightens and stands fully, his cloak falling. He stretches his back, sighs quietly, and checks his Pip-boy. Charon peers over his shoulder.

His employer hunches away, twists around in a charade of trying to casually avoid Charon’s inquisitive stares. As if it wasn’t his fault that Charon even cared, nowadays, where he went and with whom and what he would be doing—not that he cared much, really, but Vaultie had gotten him to start caring in the barest sense.

Charon himself turns, looking back over the words painted over the entrance of the metro tunnel.

“A cemetery.” Charon says, his voice like gravel.

Vaultie nods. “Right… r-right. Follow.”

They walk, upright, which is unusual; but this place is unusual, in its quietness, and the way the hills seem to roll onward with yards and yards of crumbling gravestones. They don’t go towards them, however. Vaultie is leading them onward, fiddling with his Pip-boy with one hand, his sniper rifle in the other, so large that it nearly drags across the ground when he holds it down.

“Here,” He mutters to himself, “The transmission is coming from here.”

They skirt around a truck that has irradiated barrels spilling from it, and Charon unholsters his weapon, exhaling shortly. “What transmission?”

Vaultie hunches his shoulders, “The Chinese one.”

Charon frowns and his brow creases. “And what are you expecting to find here?”

There’s a shrug, and more silence. Charon rolls his shoulders and sighs, looking up at the large factory building, the painted words _Mama Dulce’s_ almost faded entirely on the brickwork.

“Maybe… m-maybe a way to shut off the transmission?" Vaultie offers, "Maybe neat things… more suits.”

Charon doesn’t reply. They approach the entrance and then press against the outer wall; Vaultie crouches, and nudges the door open slowly with the back of his elbow.

Charon is careful not to step on any of the pre-war foodstuffs that seem to litter the floor in such a quantity, lest he fall and twist his ankle. From the immediate interior, it is unknown if its deserted or inhabited, and if things called this place home, what they were: robots, raiders, ferals?

Vaultie taps out a _wait_ on a filing cabinet. In close quarter buildings, he always scouts ahead down corridors and creeps back to relay what they need to do, how many enemies, the best plan of attack. It’s hard this close; Charon’s buckshot ricochets, and the sound of Vaultie’s rifle can alert a whole building.

Charon watches him disappear behind a corner.

Vaultie’s feet are silent. It’s a skill of his, and with the suit, he’s invisible and nigh indistinguishable from the very air itself. He doesn’t like to do it, but he can slide up to a super mutant and put a live grenade in its pocket and waltz away before it goes off. So in close quarters, he always scouts ahead, then doubles back to retrieve Charon and alert him of what the danger lookout ahead was and their plan of attack. They had a system.

Vaultie slows his steps, straining his ears to hear any sort of sound down the long corridors. There is the faint sound of machinery in the background, faint enough that it must be one lone thing still puttering. That wasn’t uncommon in abandoned factories, with one lone machine still eking out the last bits of microfusion energy from the backup generator, stamping license plate numbers on a plate long turned to dust or trying to screw a tricycle together that never comes through the assembly line. Or it could be the hum of a few office computers still running on backup.

But he swears he hears footsteps. He turns a corner; it is dimly lit, and while Vaultie can see a figure, he cannot tell if it is friendly or not. It turns.

There are gunshots. Immediately, Charon feels his gut lurch, because it is a quick volley of rapid pops squeezed off, not a single, well-placed rifle round. Charon is up on his feet in an instant, barreling forward and veering a sharp left.

“你们是谁?!” echoes down the halls, from one voice, and then another, and as Charon enters onto the main factory floor he is beholden to five ghouls all leveling Chinese assault rifles on him and the Lone Wanderer at his feet.

Vaultie holds onto his gut, as if his hands can stop the wounds from seeping blood. He’s visible, now—was probably visible the moment the bullets struck him, and his stealth cloak flashed and he fell back on his ass from the impact. He’s trying to count—two to the stomach, and one might have caught the corner of his helmet? What he’s really worried about, at this moment, is how the hell he’s going to repair his suit now that it has bullet holes in it, and how did they _see_ him—

They shout again, and Vaultie’s mind has to work, quickly, the pain making him wheeze. The Vault's taught Mandarin; he had no idea what they had said, but he can manage to reply. When he moves his jaw it clicks and his head throbs. “ _I am… I am not hostile.”_ He crocks.

Charon’s head snaps down, to Vaultie, and then the ghouls. His gun is still pointed at the group, but one of the Remnants shouts and he pulls his hand from the trigger; he slowly, slowly kneels down, placing his shotgun at his feet, onto the ground where Vaultie's blood has splattered.

“Charon—“

Charon stands, stance wide-legged and haunches raised, a guard dog protecting his master. He ignores Vaultie’s weak mutter. Even without a weapon in his hands he looks dangerous, feels dangerous with the movement of his body and the twisted snarl of his lips:

“Halt!”

The Remnants pause. Vaultie’s head droops. He feels blood pooling in the bottom of the helmet, his chin wet and sticky.

Charon’s words do not make sense. And then it occurs to Vaultie, as he runs them through his mind once or twice that Charon is speaking in a heavily accented Mandarin himself: “Do you know what you have done? Shooting a Lieutenant, a _hei gui_.”

“You lie—“ One of the remnants snarls, voice rasping over the consonants that Vaultie is struggling to keep up with as his head dips. Another remnant steps forward to say something, but the words are gone and out of his ear before his mind can react. He realizes, as the edges of his vision start to fuzz, and go black, he is drifting off.

Charon is taking two steps forward, as if the remnants do not have guns trained on him, and he is reaching up towards his head—the words are garbled in his ears, and he slumps as the remnants guns lower, his own breathing shallow in his ears.

Vaultie wonders, dimly, as his diaphragm twitches and his mind blanks out, if the remnants will find Charon’s contract. And if they’ll take care of him once he’s gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the cliffhanger. Next chapter will be soon, I promise, and have faith in me a little bit; i've been doing way too much research for this damn fic tbh so i hope my canon should be both historically accurate/mesh well with fallouts deviated timeline. :)


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I couldn't leave you guys on a cliffhanger for too long. :') And everyone who has commented, seriously, thank you so much! It really does keep me going and I appreciate it more than anything.

Charon is breaking a junkie’s fingers impassively as the doors to the 9th Circle swings open; he looks up just as the strung out ghoul in his grasp crumples to the floor and squeals like a stuck pig.

Carol is standing in the doorway, straight-backed and larger than life despite her slight frame. She looks out of place in the grime of the bar, the fury in her eyes still too clean and immaculate as she surveys the writhing man at Charon’s feet; he steps idly on the man’s bad hand, face impassive.

Ahzrukhal has the cash register open, a cigarette dangling so loosely from his lips it nearly falls when a smile slithers onto his face. “Carol, my dear—“

Her eyes shift from the clear disgust towards Charon and the simpering junkie on the ground to Ahzrukhal. She takes a step forward and Charon takes two steps of his own—not to cut her off, but to clearly stand at her side, alert. “Don’t ‘dear’ me, Ahzrukhal. What the hell is wrong with you?!”

A single eyebrow on his destroyed forehead rises. It is rare for Carol to curse, perhaps as rare as it is for her to step into the bar. She is a sweet, mothering woman, and despite only having been young when the bombs fell had all of the pre-nuclear feelings of the ideals of an atomic age family. She cared for people, which was rare enough in the wastes.

Charon knows why she is angry, because of course, he was the one who carried out the task. Ahzrukhal knows, also, but his feigned confusion is the way he satisfies his power play urges. “What’s wrong with _me?_ Perhaps it is the radiation, but I’m sure that’s adversely affected us _all_ in some way, and certainly not new—“

“I’m not in the mood for your attitude.”

She’s curt, one petite fist balled in white-knuckle fury. “What you did to Gob was out of line.”

Ahzrukhal laughs like an asthmatic snake, and there’s no humor there, just sandpaper and radiation worn lungs as he raises his hand. Charon steps over his previous target and waits, patiently. Carol doesn’t even grace him with a sideway glance, let alone her attention. This is not unusual, generally, but it is strange not to be noticed when he moves towards someone. Charon moves rarely in the bar, but devastation follows in his methodical motions. “I’ve said it before, and I will say it again: this is my bar.” Carol steels her gaze. “What happens here… it does not concern you. Winthrop and many others appreciate my fine establishment."

As steeled as her face is, her voice reeks of emotion. “Breaking my son’s arms is a line too far. Even for you.”

Ahzrukhal smiles, just smiles, and turns the bulk of attention back to his till. Caps and old world money sifting between his fingers. He ashes his lean cigarette in an ashtray mucked over from years of use.

“Perhaps he shouldn’t have come in here in the first place.”

Charon’s hands itch. He’s sure he still has Gob’s blood underneath his fingernails. The ghoul had too much liquid courage, and Ahzrukhal was in a particularly nasty mood. Charon had broken things for less.

Carol takes a step forward and Ahzrukhal raises his hand yet again; Charon takes two steps forward. Her hateful gaze burns straight through him. Charon does not care, his face blank. He keeps his attention split between her and Ahzrukhal’s signal, where he will lower it like a guillotine.

It shakes, just minutely, in the air. “My dear, I’ve grown tired of this conversation. Allow Charon to escort you out?”

It’s not the sharp, death swing of his hand cutting through the air, but his hand lowers slowly. Ahzrukhal is riddled with sins, but stupidity is not one of them; he cannot kill Carol, or even harm her, as much as it would soothe his pride. As much as he wants to, as this sturdy mother of many ghouls turns her face to spit on the floor, and then offers her arm to Charon like he’s taking her to the ball.

Charon does not know if he should take her arm or firmly lead her out by her forearm as he usually does while escorting out undesirables. He’s sure either way will incur Ahzrukhal’s wrath, and deliberating the notion for a split second more will anger him also, so he smoothly hooks his arm around Carol’s crooked one as Ahzrukhal seethes behind the bar.

Immense physical violence invalidated the contract. It was a thin, watery line that any of his contract holders wavered on. There were violences other than physical, and some amount of violence was permissible: an accidental bout of friendly fire would still keep him in the clutches of an employer, for example. The clause was not for him, really, even though it was placed as a self-preservation measure. He was a tool, too expensive for an errant flash of passion and fury to be snuffed out so mistakenly. Anything that threatened his immediate life triggered it.

And make no mistake; the failsafe was not a sudden snap of freewill for Charon. It was just another rule he was hardwired to obey.

Charon had always been a tool. Never a man.

When Ahzrukhal strikes him once, twice, his knuckles busting his bottom lip as he drives it into his teeth, he doesn’t think about failsafes and safeguards. He focuses on the pain, and the feel of blood dripping sluggishly from the gash, and the taste of it when he licks his lips and his tongue recoils from the painful split.

Charon is on his knees, breathing ragged. He turns his gaze up from the floor, just as a red splatter graces the floor. Ahzrukhal has already left him and in a few quick strides is over to the corner of the room, knocks over a large book from the desk, flinging items around in a frantic search.

He grabs something that sounds distinctly metal when it clinks against the thick, overwrought rings on his flaking thingers. In the dark of the room, lit only by candlelight, the flame bounces brilliantly off the barrel of the gun. Charon does not flinch as he approaches.

“You,” Ahzrukhal’s voice slithers from his destroyed trachea, “Are not worth the air you breath. Your death will be a good deed.”

Charon blinks, slow. He stares up at the barrel. “Physical violence on your part invalidates our contract—“

“I _own_ you,” Ahzrukhal snarls, pushes the gun forward, and Charon’s body snaps into motion as he easily grabs the gun, yanking it downward just as it goes off; the bullet lodges itself clean into the worn wood of the museum’s floors, inches from Charon’s kneecap. The motion throws Ahzrukhal off-course, and all it takes is a twist and Charon to stumble to his own feet to reverse their positions. The barrel burns hot against his palm.

Ahzrukhal’s chest heaves. He glances up, clearly enraged, but there’s fear behind his eyes. He reaches up with a hand just barely shaking, rubbing his thumb over the mirrored lightly bleeding split in his lip.

“Get out of my sight.”

Charon’s jaw ticks. He can see Ahzrukhal trying to decide what was more humiliating; on his knees on the floor, or the effort and ache that it would take to get up in front of Charon without his help. His words spit venom. “Go run laps around the mall. Run laps until night fall.”

He drops the pistol before turning to leave. He walks out of the museum with a straight-back. Willow says nothing, not with his face set like that. The sun hangs fat overhead behind the smog of the city and radiation; underneath his leather arm, and his damaged skin, he can still feel sweat prickling up sticky behind his collar.

He is running on a near empty stomach but by the twentieth long, long lap around, dodging the potshots of the Brotherhood he staggers and vomits mostly bile, his head throbbing with every chest-wrenching heave.

“Doing alright, Charon?” Willow calls, when she spies him sluggishly running past with a streak of yellow down his front. He doesn’t respond. He hasn’t been given orders to.

There’s no point to an enslaved mercenary unless the fine print was short. There should be no caveats to a good slave soldier. Do what was told. Fight. Even normal military units were expected to obey more commands than Charon was currently held to—

He should have known. The suit. Remembered, faintly, but nearly three centuries of memories careening wildly between vivid and repressed and everything was…

Familiar. Afterall, war never changed, and while he never fought with the _hei gui_ troops, or saw much of them past war plan photos, he certainly heard of them. They were one of the crown jewels of the Chairman’s military pushback against the Americans. But he never served with one, and Charon had spent his whole life with his back to a wall and tuned out. He should have remembered, even if Vaultie’s suit was clearly a pilfered prototype, a diagram long shuffled amongst his General’s other paperwork.

Should have realized why old memories were coming back, should have remembered, should have safeguarded, should have wondered why the commands felt so right and made his muscles jump to obey, overeager, almost felt like coming home.

Charon knows he may be the last of his kind. Not that he would ever willingly try and find the others, reach out to them and talk like a concerned mother at a neighborhood watch meeting: “Are your deeply embedded mental fortifications and rules also slowly crumbling? Do you find yourself pulling away from the threads of the contract that binds you and finding yourself toeing at the edge of the abyss often?”

There’s a part of him that wants Vaultie to strike him, in hopes he will see red. He wants to know he _can_. Before Vaultie, he had been feeling the strongest sense of freedom yet. Ahzrukhal could ask him to guard the 9 th Circle all day, but his demands could only be physical: throwing out junkies,  But he couldn’t kill him, couldn’t raise his hand to him after that day he ran so long and so far his heels bled through his boots and a knee that made him limp for weeks after. And the next time Azrukhal had told him to run, had tried to punish him—

He had said no.

Charon wants Adam to hit him because he wants to know if he could hit back. But he realizes, he knows, even if he were to do something so out of character, Charon could never retaliate. He would never strike back.

\--

Charon finds himself face down in the dirt, the heel of a boot against the back of his skull.

He doesn’t understand what they are shouting at him, screaming. He was never taught English; none of them had been, given the tenacity Americans had tried to steal their technologies before. Guns, fusion secrets—they had stolen a hei gui suit before, and though it was only a rudimentary prototype, they had already reverse engineered it to make these tiny boxes that not only granted invisibility but a kind of unstable anger that the entire nation was already known for. They were a terrifying plague, a menace.

Not that any of this mattered now, months after the falling of the bombs.

He thinks he understands some of what they’re saying, or at least the tone behind it, bellowing and angry. He imagines it is mostly slurs, or shouts of communist, red. He doesn’t know why they think _he_ was the one who shot first, that America wasn’t the one to pull the trigger on the world.

But Charon doesn’t know, either. All he knows is that it rained black soot and he ate the remainder of another man against his will in an effort to stave off total death and starvation. His head throbs as the boot crushes downward, in tune with the internal throbbing of his brain.

The failsafes were there for a reason. His standing command: if something happens, return to the mainland. Return to China.

The pressure lets up. The toe of the boot connects with his side, kicking him over to stare at the night sky. It’s mostly blotted with pollution and radiation and the clouds hang heavy and sick. His skin itches. He closes his eyes and his body is telling him, even as their angry spittle and foreign words fall over him, that the best way of survival is to wait. He knows he doesn’t want to, doesn’t want to survive, but the only thing louder in his mind than their jeers is to live, and to return home, and wait for orders.

The Americans that found him in the West Virginia mountains do not kill him, for some reason he will never know; they force him up, and tie his arms together, and they make him follow them for days and miles after. He does not remember their faces, but Charon does remember the way his face started to itch in earnest after they drunkenly fell asleep and he killed them all with their own munitions. He scratches at his skin, sallow and thin from malnutrition, and it flakes off underneath his short fingernails like snow.

His first master after the General scratches, too. He is a short man, bald and sturdy, the right stature to fit inside of a submarine. As soon as he sees Charon, he yells _yeniceri. E_ ven with his hair self-cut short with a combat knife, he knows what he is. The contract changes hands. The early years are a blur, even when he’s living them. Their faces meld together.

He never makes it back to the mainland. Charon’s had many other standing orders of return since then.

\--

Adam shifts in his seat, tapping his pen restlessly against papers in the dark of the classroom.

“So, I’m assuming none of you read the chapter for last night’s homework,” Mr. Brotch drawls onward, walking towards the front of the room. He points towards the map flickering on the screen from the projector. “Who can tell me what this country is?”

“Does it really matter now?” Someone from the back exclaims, and a few snicker in reply. Mr. Brotch sighs.

“It could. This is China. Or, possibly no longer China; the bombs fell in 2077, heralding the beginning and end of the Great War in a thermo-nuclear flash. Before that was the Sino-American war of 2066, itself simply a more concentrated and vicious continuation of the Resource Wars of 2052…”

His eyes settle on Adam’s hand, eyes rolling. His designation would be teacher’s pet, if Brotch himself didn’t also lack interest in the majority of the drivel he taught. Vaultie was a voracious learner, and questioner, and the amount of time he spent after the bell rang keeping the entire class so he could ask about the finer details of pre-war macroeconomics in the European Commonwealth, and did that include Australia—

Better to answer that raised hand now. “Yes, Adam?”

“It’s… China. The People's Republic of Chia. But also Taiwan, J-japan…” His voice wavers as Butch glowers at him from across the aisle. “They took… over a lot. Right?”

“Correct.” Brotch responds, walking back to the map to trace the monolithic similar-colored eastern hemisphere. “As you can see on the map, the People’s Republic of China annexed a majority of its neighboring states; of note, the bloody take-over of Japan and resultant genocide that lasted for five years between 1980 and 1985,” His finger taps to the small island off the mainland’s coast, “The installation of a puppet state in Korea during the 1960s, and then the acquisition of the Philippines once we abandoned it in 2022.”

Mr. Brotch clears his throat, and then continues, “It could also be argued that, especially by the time of the Sino-American war, Russia was effectively a puppet state. This will be on your test--”

“Like Canada?” Adam blurts out.

Brotch frowns. “No; Canada’s annexation was mainly peaceful, aside from a few left-wing protestors. With the famine and plague going around, the majority of the country was interested in aligning themselves permanently with America’s interest.” He ambles back to the projector, clicking over to the next slide: a picture of a powersuited Vault Boy and a commando Vault Boy face each other, the numbers 2066 bold on the screen. “On the other hand, China’s history of ruthless expansion just aided in their, ah—I believe your textbook clearly states it as _red commie blood lust,_ ” He snorts, faintly amused. “And thus, in 2066, thought that they had claim to the pipelines in Alaska.”

Adam nods, looking down to his binder to jot down a few notes. Something hits the back of his head, and the wadded ball of paper falls to the floor; he flinches at the impact, and though knows he shouldn’t, glances behind his back. Butch sneers in the dim light of the room as Brotch drones onward.

\---

Of the four men seated at the make-shift poker table, only two seem to still be in the game; all of them had unbuttoned shirts and loosened ties, their pressed uniform jackets hanging off the backs of their chairs. “They think it’s bad here. But have you seen what they have been doing to their own people—“ One of the men that is still in the game, the only with his hat on, remarks bitterly, tapping his cards on the table, “To their neighbors? Dissenters are shot in the back of the head like dogs.” The one with his hat still on tips it back to gaze at the others; they’re all equals here, with half-filled drinks on the table and smoldering cigarettes in the ashtrays. “They’ve poisoned their own with diseases and poisons meant for _us_.”

The man directly across groans, flipping bills into the middle pile as he places his cards gingerly face down onto the table. “Can we not talk about the war, Jiang. We have little time as it is with them on our _soil_.”

“You could do with more patriotism, Liu. With the release of the newest _hei gui_ suits, we’re going to win this.”

The other two at the table grow tense as the other stare squarely at each other. The one called Liu suddenly takes one of his cards, and uses it to flip the others over. A pair of aces. “I have men with families in Shanghai and Nanjing; do you expect them to feel better that they are at least not the annexed Canadians being shot like dogs in their own streets by supposed brothers? That, since it’s these American tin pigs, they should rejoice in the pillaging of their homes?” He shakes his head brusquely, “They shoot the prisoners in the same manner, here or across the ocean. Back of the head. There is no honor in the Americans. I am patriotic, but refuse to belittle my men. They deserve to grieve.”

“Capitalist slime,” One man agrees under his breath, pulling a drag from his cigarette.

“There’s no time for grieving.” Jiang grunts, as he reveals his own hand. A bluff: just a pair of fives, complete bunk. Liu laughs, sweeping his arm forward and raking the winnings toward him in two drags of his greedy hands.

He picks up the American pistol, turning it in his hand. “How nice. Which one of you had put this in?”

One of the men who had long since been out curtly gestures with two fingers. “Picked up by my own _yeniceri._ ”

Liu hums in approval, turning it over in his hands. He finally grips it by the barrel and holds it up.

From the back of the room, a man approaches the table. He is tall, and looks taller still with the rest of them seated around the table. Unlike the generals, he is uniformed and heavily armored, plain and undecorated. He takes the revolver by the handle, and they hold it as if presenting it to the others. His stance is at attention.

“Really,” The other man says drily, his eyes still trained on his loss. “It’s a high-ranking officer’s pistol. It is engraved. If you do not want it, give it back.”

Liu snaps. The man hands it back, delicately, and careful not to touch his hand. “I want it. I just wanted you all to see it.”

Jiang and the other men groan, snorting and rolling their eyes at Liu’s broad grin. Jiang snaps his own fingers, and a man similar in physical stature, looks and garb as the other moves from standing at attention leaning against the wall to his side in two quick strides. “Turn off the radio.”

There is no nodding from the other man, because there needed to be no agreement to an order. He moves to the corner of the room. The radio, playing illicit Western music, warbles for a split second longer before it is turned off.

“Do we play another round?” One of the other men asks. Jiang sighs as his bodyguard returns to his side, and Liu simply shrugs.

“It is getting late.”

“You’re saying that because you’re losing.”

“And isn’t your squad heading out tomorrow?”

The men dissolve into low, good natured chatter, bantering. Liu finishes his drink, and the man behind him is quick to grab the nearly empty bottle of imported whiskey to top the glass off once again. He is quick, but maybe too much so; Liu’s hand languidly waves over the top of his glass, and the guard is not quick enough to pull the bottle back up before some whiskey splashes on his knuckles and over the cigarette in his hand.

It's instantaneous. Liu’s knuckles crack across his face, his head jerking with the blow, but the guard’s face is unblinking. Jiang’s laugh is instigative, his heavy gaze near voyeuristic as Liu grabs his yeniceri by the base of his high ponytail. The bodyguard’s red strands fall over his fist like blood, and he yanks him down at a painfully awkward level so that they are level with each other.

“Clean that up.”

The bodyguard affirms, quickly, quietly, and Liu lets go of his hair. Some of the red strands are left behind in his loose fist; the General sighs with mild annoyance, shaking his hand to flick them off to the floor with indifferent disgust. “ _Nóng Mèo._ ”

Charon wakes in a cold sweat in a foreign room; his initial reaction is to reach under his pillow, and he finds a pistol tucked there. There is another knock on the door, and he trains the gun on it.

“Is the Lieutenant well enough to receive food?”

Charon exhales, glancing over from his bedroll on the floor to the bed on his left. Even in the dim lighting, Vaultie is sickly pale, his usually washed-out curls looking practically stark as they cling to his forehead from sweat. His chest rises, and falls, but it is slow and shallow. There is another knock, the frail doorknob clanking in its socket.

Charon rises to his feet, checks the blood bag hanging from a makeshift IV stand, and then his employer’s pulse before he finally answers the man at the door in his own Mandarin, just raising his voice enough to be heard: “A moment.” Charon counts out the needles sitting in the first-aid kit bedside, counts them twice.

There is silence, save for the drip of the artificial plasma. Charon watches his employer’s slack face. His hand hovers over his mouth; his breath is there. Soft, but it is there.

Charon turns on his heel; when he opens the door, he does it suddenly and closes it right behind him. The Remnant in front of him stands at attention, holding a chipped platter filled with the finest array of food Mama Dulce’s had to offer; the Blamco Mac and Cheese, and the spam, all the food, it's all plated as if it was pre-war fine dining, and it's ludicrous and strangely comforting, the way they have transformed the supply of American snacks and sub par sludge into echoes of the food they had gotten at home.

Charon sniffs, looking down at the man. He opens his mouth to speak, but Charon cuts him off: “Not all of us have spent the past years getting fat on processed American food and listening to beautiful women on the radio, you bourgeois swine.” Charon snaps, “We’ve been on our feet for years, disrupting the American system, and you wonder how he is doing after you gun him down?”

The ghoul is silent. He bows his head, “My apologies.”

Charon simply grunts, his lip curling back as he takes the tray roughly from his grasp. The Remnant’s eyes are still on the ground as he adds, “The Captain is eager to see him when he is well enough to do so.”

“He will be the first to know when he is ready.” Charon replies curtly. He balances one side of the tray on his hip and uses his newly freed hand to open the door and close it right behind him. He places the tray onto the table, glancing over at Vaultie’s prone form. His chest rises, and falls.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First, thanks to commenters, I really appreciate it, both the usual suspects and new faces. :^) second, if you love bad fanmixes please check out my tumblr ( civilization-illstayrighthere.tumblr.com/tagged/dear-hearts-and-gentle-people ) for the 8tracks mix. We're coming up on the home stretch, everyone.

Vaultie has been feeling so guilty ever since he gave Angela Staley those Queen Ant Hormones he has been donating every day to St. Monica’s church after breakfast up in the Weatherly. Father Clifford smiles and handles Vaultie like he’s something small and tender and in need of guidance. Charon can’t contest the fact that he probably does need guidance, but it’s not his place to really think those thoughts or care in the first place.

Before they leave Rivet City for the Vault, the Lone Wanderer makes sure to visit Father Clifford before he leaves. He nearly empties his entire pack onto the floor before finding what he had wanted to give him; a practically pristine copy of King James Bible, its spine barely creased.

Father Clifford lights up, his eyes crinkling in the corners and pressing his palm to the tattered and threadbare bible resting on his pulpit. “Oh dear. Oh no, you should keep that. That is too precious to give away.”

Vaultie shakes his head, curls bouncing, and thrusts the tome towards Father Clifford with both hands. “N-no, I… I really want you to have it. You’ll use it more than me. It would—It would mean a lot.”

Father Clifford smiles and takes the bible, running an appreciative thumb along the edges of the book. Vaultie laments to him often how terrible the books are in the Capital Wasteland. A scribe over in the Arlington Library had asked him to bring her any pristine books he had found, but Charon had yet to see the carefully curated collection leave his shelf in Megaton. Anything that could still be read, even if it wasn’t worth reading, was stored to be safeguarded back home.

His hand finds a dog ear amongst the crisp pages. “If you insist—would you allow me to read the,” And he pauses, counts them, “Two passages you’ve bookmarked here?”

Vaultie flushes, and just sits down on a pew. Father Clifford smiles. He has never reacted with anything but kindness towards Vaultie and his strange anachronisms. Charon doesn’t trust him. He doesn’t know why. He doesn’t sit, but stands next to Vaultie as the old man clears his throat.

“Do not gloat over me, my enemy! Though I have fallen, I will rise. Though I sit in darkness, the Lord will be my light.” Father Clifford begins, and Charon feels his eyes glazing over already, “Because I have sinned against him, I will bear the Lord’s wrath…”

\--

Charon takes two steps forward, as if the remnants do not have guns trained on him, reaching up to his head with no fear and gathering what strands of red hair he has left in a fist. He holds them up, towards the light and for the others to see: “I am a _yeniceri_ , originally of General Jiang, inherited by Lieutenant Liúlàng and under order of the eternal Chairman you will _respect us_.”

“How _dare_ you invoke the Chairman’s name,” One remnant begins to snarl, but Charon cuts him off.

He has not spoken his mother tongue in at least a century and a half, and memory is surfacing so hard and fast it’s like collecting phlegm in the back of his throat, weighing heavy and noxious on his palette. This is muscle memory, the way he cuts his palm through the air to silence the man, biting back: “Bring me your highest ranking and pray he takes mercy on you when he sees what you’ve done.”

The ghouls in front of him finch, and only one readjusts his grip on his assault rifle as Charon turns his back on them, frantically kneeling to his employer’s side. His hands are shaking; he’s never had nerves before, but the language is hanging heavy in his ears, makes his skin crawl. He reaches for the helmet—there is a hole, just an inch north of his visor, ragged from the impact.

The sound of a single pair of footsteps falling away from them startles Charon’s hands away from the helmet like fire; he cannot remove it. If he does, they will see, obviously, that he is not ghoulified, let alone from the mainland. He shoulders his pack off of his back and onto the floor, its contents spilling out on impact and even further skittering away across the grimy tin as he shifts through the items. The old world trinkets, the books, spare spoons, cans of food, and finally the small first-aid box. Two bottles of buffout, a packet of plasma, an inhaler of jet and a miniature can of hairspray—and stimpacks. He pushes Vaultie’s slack hand away from his stomach wounds and jams the needle into the tearing of his suit.

A hand touches his shoulder, and Charon is automatic; he whirls and grabs the wrist, jerking the Remnant forward to pull him off balance and away from Vaultie. His other elbow goes into the middle of the man’s back for leverage as he wrenches the ghoul’s arm up, and up, into a clean break that echoes throughout the high-ceilings of the warehouse floor.

Behind him, there is a polite, soft clap. Charon looks over his shoulder, ignoring the pitiful sobs and squirms of the man under him.

“Amazing. I have not seen one of you in years. And after all of this time, still sharp as the day you were made.”

From the heavily worn bars affixed onto his arm and the frayed badges on his breast, Charon immediately deduces this man is their commanding officer. Charon’s chest is heaving. The adrenaline in him is fast and hot but he shouldn’t be breathing so heavily, the holes of his wrecked nostrils flaring as he tries to suck in as much air as possible while still keeping his mouth shut in a grim line.

 _It happens_.

Charon does not remember his parents or his home. Government lackeys came for the farmers and foreigners, especially those in the shadow of the Ural Mountains, living hand to mouth on sustenance farming made harder with stringent government taxation. He does not know if his mother gave him up willingly, eager for the small paycheck it entailed, eager to eliminate another mouth to feed, and the dim prospect that her child would serve the Chairman himself. Maybe she was forced to, if he was a child of mixed parentage, as such things weren’t welcomed in the highly divided villages. There was no love between the families who had lived there for countless generations and the Russians and other Slavic peoples who had slipped over the country border. A child of star-crossed lovers caused by the push of an even more impoverished nation of men trying to escape their country, of rape, of bartering of a body for food rations.

His mother gave him up, or was parted from him, either way, he never knew her. In the end, it was an honor to have a son in the military. They said they were destined. Red hair was the calling card, fiery and loyal, with enough cultural backings by the modern Communism and past Confucianism that it was an easy enough pill to swallow. It spoke of greatness, of being worthy of serving men even greater. He doesn’t remember his childhood well. He remembers the fighting, and training, and the way his mind seemed to constantly pulse with migraines. They were soldiers, their bodies and lives indebted to Chairman Cheng. Protect your superiors at all cost; servitude was what you were born to do--

“Yeniceri…”

The ones who weren’t strong enough disappeared, culled quietly behind the scenes. They were soldier slaves, and the brutal dichotomy of training until their prepubescent bodies ached and bled was always contrasted with the small, civilized favors dispersed like breadcrumbs to keep them tame. They were not flayed. The word _slave_ was never used. And really, Charon hadn’t even realized his lesser fellows had been killed until he was older, like kittens taken down to river to be drowned in a sack; and by then, he hadn’t cared.

Some were assigned to the Chariman’s personal guard, a sea of straight backs, piercing eyes, and their red hair. Half of their power relied on the visual, the appearance. They were not allowed to cut their hair and wore them in high ponytails on duty, allowed to tie in a bun if training; it was not convenient in the least, but it did not hinder them. Couldn’t.

They were all brainwashed, but each took their designations differently. Some were fervent believers through and through, with Chairman Cheng as their God and servitude as their salvation. Those were often the ones chosen for his personal guard. The others were assigned to high ranking officials, nobles, military leaders, personal gifts from the Chairman himself. Their contracts were stamped with the Chariman’s seal and tucked into the pocket of their coats; it was an honor he could bestow, the protection of unblinking, unflinching servitude.

The yeniceri clean up after the Generals have left; they are the only ones trusted enough to do it, and that trust comes with dim perks. They do not care if they pilfer the butts of precious cigarettes and take the tobacco to make their own, or if they let the radio play quietly while they burn any leftover files and papers. They are quick, efficient, and precise. If one falters, the other picks up the slack, passes the slowly burning cigarette over, turns a blind eye when a leftover piece of food is tucked surreptitiously in a coat sleeve. It could be mistaken for a sort of silent camaraderie, but they all know if they were ever told to murder the other, they would. There would be no hesitation. Life was becoming exceedingly precious by the moment, with the war and famines rolling in time with the blackouts over the country and draft guidelines becoming looser as the pool of available men thinned. But the climbing price of life makes it _exciting_.

Two high-ranking Lieutenants were heavily reprimanded after getting drunk on soju and having their yeniceris fight until one lost an eye and broke three ribs. The other walked away with busted knuckles, blood splattered on his bare chest. Though they were, as a group of humans, thoroughly broken and bowed, rumors still slid through the cracks of those weaker. Rumors of more beatings, that some Generals would nearly bleed a yeniceri dry just to watch a reaction, while others treated them like sons, and General Sima asked his yeniceri to do more than fight--

Charon’s sense of self rolls in like a tide, breaking hard on the water’s edge; he finds himself standing at attention in front of the Captain. He is not saluting. Being in employment to a Lieutenant— _Adam, the Lone Wanderer, Vaultie_ , but his mind is fizzling and crackling with static—he does not need to. He is neither civilian nor military, a figure hovering between, above and amongst and below.

“He needs medical attention,” He finds himself saying, his words not entirely his own.

“So then we shall—“

“No.” Charon sets his jaw so hard he can feel it pop. “You have done enough.”

The Captain’s face twitches, then settles.

“We need a room. I need to tend to him at once.”

It is obvious that the man is not used to being talked to in this way; his upper lip curls back in the slightest and he seems to be wavering in deciding to take a half-step back or forward. The ghouls are slightly taller than the average wastelander, even with the bending of age; but that wasn’t particularly hard. Charon’s still a good foot taller than them, however.

He turns, as the Captain starts to yell at his soldiers to tidy a private room up. Charon was never a medic, but he has learned basics in his long life, especially nursing his own broken body. He doesn’t want to move Vaultie, but he must. He is thankful that his fingertips are so caked with dirt that it’s impossible to tell he might not be ghoul underneath.

Charon carries him, his body slung between his outstretched arms. His body is crumpled yet stretched out; he’s sure, from the remants angle, with a dark wounded figure in his arms he looks like some of those ancient religious triptychs that still hung in some of the museums, ravaged with untempered age and soot. He follows one eager soldier, and steps over the one quietly simpering over his broken bones on the floor.

\--

Vaultie comes to slowly. His head aches, not just an internal throb of a migraine, but the flesh wound on his skull as well. There’s a damp rag draped over his forehead, and as he shifts and reaches to groggily grab it, a rough hand settles on top of his own.

He’s being spoken to, gently, but it takes a moment too long to process the raspy words—“Don’t move it.” Mandarin, again. He hasn’t heard the language this much since the week he listened to his Vault-Tec approved study tapes before his big Chinese final for school.

Vaultie’s hand goes slack under the larger one on his, and as his eyes slide open he has to squint in the dim candle light to see. Charon’s face is lit in strong, deep shadows that, at first, shamefully, almost scare him; they are not kind to the pockmarks of his face, his nonexistent nose, the deep shadows underneath his eyes.

“How do you feel?” He asks, carefully, still in Mandarin. Charon sounds different this way he sounds even more stilted, if possible, more formal and carefully pronounced. The accent itself is different, but not incomprehensible; it could even be due to disuse, Vaultie thinks, as he weakly moves his hand to settle over Charon’s, his fingers flexing over his warm knuckles.

“Okay…” His tongue is a little thick in his mouth, but he replies back in the same language, “Are we in danger?”

Charon is grateful his employer was not obtuse; there is a guard still outside, behind the door of their quarters, and even with the radio playing quietly in the corner he fears the acoustics of American words in these halls. “Not at present.”

That’s all Vaultie has to hear, for now. Charon removes his hand from his forehead, standing from his kneeling position on the edge of the cot. He takes his time to survey their new surroundings. It’s a small room, no windows, and what Vaultie can guess was a former office judging by the desk pushed to the corner. He himself is on a cot, but when he gingerly turns his head to the right he can see Charon’s bedroll next to his bedding on the floor. The room is lit by a few candles, and it is comfortingly warm, especially given he’s under a blanket that is surprisingly intact for the wastes.

Charon checks the IV that is slowly dripping artificial plasma; Vaultie hadn’t even realized that he had a drip until then, and he turns his arm over to stare at his bruised wrist.

“I did not know you knew…” He does not know the word for the IV, so he settles with, “Medicine.”

“Not well. Just basics.” He grunts, finding the IV satisfactory; Vaultie cannot tell what his purpose of fidgeting with it is, and even he can read the movements as nervous.

He raises his arm as high as he can. An inch above the cot and it’s shaking with exhaustion. “I… I can tell.” He laughs, nervously, baring the bruises towards him.

Charon flinches. Vaultie’s face falls. His arm falls back to the mattress with a heavy thump.

“It is—“

“I apologize,” Charon says, quickly, voice cowed and his movements jerky as he move towards the bed while straining to lean away. “For my clumsiness, and lack of ski—“

“Charon.”

His shoulders raise; his eyes snap towards the door. Vaultie continues, in hushed English this time, “I-I’ll… I’m going to be fine. In no time. We can leave—w-we can leave now, even—“

“You are in no shape to leave, and if necessary I will block that door to save your life.” Charon replies, still in Mandarin, finitely. Vaultie tries to hunch his body up to a sitting position, but just the slightest bend of his torso and the bandages wrapped around his middle makes him hiss and tears prick in the corner of his eyes.

Charon lurches forward, his top half towards his employer, his bottom half rooted to the floor, away from him. “Are you hurt?”

He reaches for Vaultie’s bandages; automatically, Vaultie fumbles up, palm outward to keep Charon away. He’s sure he’s pulled a stitch. “I-I’m fine. Are you…”

He blinks through the tears, focusing through the pain on the face above him. Charon’s jaw is tense, his eyes narrowed. “Are you alright?”

When he reaches out for him, Charon holds fast, but his head ticks upward, and away from his employer, like a dog held taut on a short leash. Vaultie doesn’t catch the implications of the jerk away. He rests his hand on his shoulder meekly.

“I am as well as I can be in this situation.” He rasps.

Vaultie smiles, lopsided. “We will be out soon.”

\--

Charon rubs his thumb against the thin skin of Vaultie’s wrist, pressing to the blue line stark there. Vaultie is fast asleep. Charon perches on the edge of the cot, next to the impossibly warm body cocooned in the blanket. He tries not to think of the feel of his skin underneath his rough hands. He counts his pulse in his head, steady, steady, but it takes him an embarrassingly long time because the numbers keep getting shuffled in his head between Mandarin and English. He counts the beats, like waves against the hull of a boat, and there’s a faint sense of déjà vu that he can’t exactly grasp as his head nods and his chin touches his chest.

When Vaultie awakens, the presence of Charon’s body is immediate. He radiates heat, a solid wall on his left, his chest quietly rumbling with each rise and fall.

His wrist is still in his hand. He flexes his fingers, and swallows so hard and so loud he’s surprised Charon doesn’t awaken.

God, he swears he loves him.

\--

It has been a few days since Vaultie has awoken. Twice a day, a remnant leaves Vaultie and Charon a meal. Each time, Charon retrieves it, and snaps back in a Mandarin so fast he can barely understand him through the door. Vaultie grunts as Charon eases him into a sitting position. Charon does not leave often, but when he does, it feels like he is gone for hours. He will leave him, often when he has drifted off to sleep, and wakes up in an empty, quiet room. When he comes back, his back a little straighter and his jaw a little tighter, Vaultie is so anxious he babbles.

“Is this what Ahzrukhal meant… by that you deserved this?”

Charon scoffs, eyes on the bowl of noodles and the strange, almost too-salty broth he’s brought his employer. “Hardly.” He takes the bowl in hand, his thick skin generally impervious to the heat, but his hands are shaking minutely, voice thin. “He never knew of my past.”

Vaultie tries to take the bowl himself. His fingers only stray a moment before he hisses and pulls back, the liquid threateningly sloshing around. “A-and—ouch, shit—he said he—“

Charon doesn’t react to Vaultie’s pain other than batting one of his hands languidly away, smoothly interrupting his hesitant voice with his own deadpan: “If you are asking for every atrocity I have committed, assume the majority and the worst.”

Vaultie frowns as Charon spoons some of the broth, eyebrows jumping up as he raised the utensil expectantly.

“Everything?”

Charon presses his lips together. “Is that a command?” He grinds out, dropping the spoon and its liquid contents into the bowl with a small splash, “What is your tie with Anchorage—“

“Don’t speak—d-don’t say that,” He hurries, defensively, and Charon’s parted lips snap close at the half-command. He glares sourly at the noodles in his hand, his knuckles turning white from the grip on his chipped bowl.

Vaultie shifts uncomfortably. The silence is deafening. He hangs his head.

“I was a Lieutenant.” He mumbles. Charon says nothing. He stirs the soup in small, jagged motions.

He sucks in a breath, and continues, “I lead a, uh… ‘suicide squad’ after destroying three anti-artillery crafts with my second-in-command gunnery sergeant.”

“Marines?”

“I… I don’t know.” Vaultie admits. He’s almost startled by the spoon suddenly appearing in his vision underneath his chin. He leans forward, steadying himself with a slight touch to Charon’s arm and takes the proferred spoonful. Charon clears his throat, and does it again; brings a spoonful of the broth up, careful, and Vaultie takes it in his mouth. “I was never—does that make sense? It doesn’t… I-i…”

He trails off, reaching for the bowl again. Charon moves it away from his grasp, until Vaultie drops his hands. Then, he brings it back. Their eyes meet, and Charon glances down at the spoon, raising his eyebrows, and glances back up.

Vaultie eats, but he doesn’t reach for the hot bowl again. Charon does not mind being used as a temporary pot holder. They are quiet, until Charon asks: “How long were you there?”

“In Anchorage? Or… or under?”

Charon ducks his head slightly. “Either.”

Vaultie’s big eyes look everywhere but him. “Uh. A few months. Four months, I guess. Maybe. I didn’t keep track.” He knows that’s a lie. He swallows another spoonful, lets the liquid scald his throat. But now that he’s thinking about the number, he can’t seem to pull it out from his mind, and a sense of anxious dread that Charon’s expecting an answer makes him want to crawl underneath the bed. “M-maybe. Maybe five. I think it was only a week under. Five in Anchorage.”

Charon says nothing, but he does nod. Something loosens in the Lone Wanderer’s chest. Vaultie’s eyes flit upward. “D-do… c-can I. Do you want to hear more?”

Charon watches his own hands as he flexes them, curls his fingers around the bowl a little more. There are many things his employer has said and done. This has probably been the one he understands the least. And yet, he nods, again, slow.

So Vaultie starts to talk.


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This took so long to write, but-- it's a pretty long chapter, so I hope the wait wasn't too bad. :')

Charon holds the suit up. “You are lucky that one of them was a tailor’s son before the war. He patched it up well enough, considering this is a prototype.”

Vaultie touches the material of his Chinese stealth suit almost reverently, relief apparent on his face. “Thank… thank god, if this would have… wow.” He takes the silky, chainmail-esque material in his hands, where it pools in his arms as he runs his fingers along every part of it. The armored parts built flush to the material, breast plate and reinforced shoulders weigh heavy in his lap. There is a slight ridge on his side from where it had torn, and was now patched. The material was near identical. “And how did they…?“

“Standard-issue American reconnaissance suit.” Charon rattles off, his back going a little straighter, pushing his shoulders back. Vaultie has a hard time hiding his uncomfortable frown and nervous shifting.

“And my helmet..?”

Charon shifts his stance from one foot to the other. “It is fixed, mostly. Lucky that it did not hit the visor.”

Vaultie doesn’t like that his suit is in others’ hands. (Though, dimly, he realizes that it’s technically back in the hands of those who should have ownership of the pilfered suit.) If Charon hadn’t taken it from him while he was unconscious, he never would have parted with it in the first place.

He holds up his right arm, punching a few buttons and twiddling the side dial of his Pip-Boy. It hisses, and he feels a strange pressure and a slight twinge as the pneumatic lock deactivates and the needle that keeps his vitals retracts. He pulls the clunky bracer off and places it onto the bedside table, flexing his hand. It’s been a while since he had taken it off; his arm feels strangely light without its presence.

“Will… w-will you help me put it back on?”

Charon grunts, his soldier’s stance hunching over and inward just enough to be noticeable. “What?”

Vaultie holds up his stealth suit. “Get my helmet. We can… let’s just see, if it still really works.”

The invisibility. Charon obeys, retrieving the helmet from the far desk and placing it at the foot of the bed. He moves around to Vaultie, and the kid wraps his arms around Charon’s broad frame and eases himself up more.

He is careful, and slowed by pain. But Charon understands why he wants to try it on; he does not want to have to sit and stare at it for the next week or so. “How will you crouch?”

“I’ll try.” He mumbles, squeezing his shoulder as his side twitches and then spasms from the sudden pain. His fingers dig in just a little harder. “I have to.”

Charon finds it strangely natural to dress the Lone Wanderer. Once he’s sat up on the bed, Charon kneels down on the floor at his side. He’s had this duty before, though not due to a wounded employer; usually, it was done because of heavy armor, or impractical dress uniforms. He is careful of his side, his hands lightly skimming over the stiff fabric of his Vault Suit and the tear where the bullets had caught him, still stained brown from the blood that had soaked through.

He has to fumble near the back for the zipper and clasp; Vaultie shivers as knuckles bump against the ridges of his spine.

“Do you need the gauntlets and shin pads?”

Vaultie shakes his head, mum. The helmet is placed in his hands; Vaultie slides it on.

It takes much more effort to get him to his feet. Charon nudges him towards the edge of the bed, helps his legs over the side. He presses his socked feet to the cold ground and he taps five fingers, four fingers, three fingers, two, counting down.

On the last tap he pushes himself off. It’s not fast in the least, but he does wheeze in pain even with Charon supporting him. His knees bend, then buckle, but he hits that right altitude and his entire body flickers once, twice, and then disappears.

Vaultie laughs, his body shaking from the pain and the sweet pleasure of success, triumphant and invisible in his arms. Charon has to pick him up and deposit him into the bed to get him off the floor. His hands shake as he pulls his helmet off; there’s already a light sheen of sweat on his forehead, but he is almost glowing. “I need to thank him. For fixing this.”

“Don’t. You have too many ranks above him to treat him like that.”

Vaultie trips up on the words, startled. He stares wide-eyed and confused. “Like a person?”

Charon frowns. He understands Vaultie’s connotations, and at another time he would have caught his own tongue. Instead, his words are blunt: “He is your inferior.” He says simply. Vaultie turns his head away, so that he cannot see his expression.

\--

He is—

He is a tool, and he is deadly, and he is fulfilling his purpose. He is at his peak. The Remnants look at him with fear in their eyes because he is the long arm of his Lieutenant, and therefore, the Chairman, and he is—

Charon doesn’t think. He acts, and he does, but he doesn’t think. His mind is blissfully quiet. He is an automaton, a machine. Vaultie snaps his fingers in front of Charon’s face. He blinks, but does not flinch.

“Charon.”

He snaps into place. He does what he is told. “Yes?”

“Were you listening?”

“Of course.”

He was listening. He was listening. Charon couldn’t repeat what was being told, but he was listening, as he was told.

\--

Moriarity has been laid up in Doc Church’s with a bad case of stomach flu for the past few days, leaving the bar mercifully bereft of his grating accent and heavy hand. It’s never stopped Charon and Vaultie from frequenting the bar before, but the absence of him is a welcome relief.

People have trickled outside or to the rooms upstairs; the bar itself is empty save for Gob, Charon and Vaultie. Vaultie keeps buying three beers at a time, sliding two over to his ghoul companions. He never spends often, has no vices and scrimps and scavenges, so when he spends, he’s telling Gob to grab the good, less skunked stuff gathering dust on the top shelf.

He’s not a drinker often, either, so while Gob drinks faster and Charon has bulk and patience behind him, Vaultie is only on his second and he’s chatty and bright.

“What did you guys have in the Vaults?”

“Ah… nothing, really. Beer, but it tasted—different than this. T-tangier? No hard liquor—“

Gob’s grinning, a certain lightness in his step as he bounds from one end of the bar to the other and grabs a dark bottle. He uncaps and pours a half shot into a chipped shotglass, and then pours two more full ones. “Here, then. My treat.”

Vaultie is taking the half shot even as he’s shaking his head. “I’m _paying_ you.” He insists, as Gob slides the other over to Charon.

He quickly shakes his head. “No thank you.”

Vaultie’s hand is bumping against Gob’s, the liquor almost sloshing out. “Aw, c’mon, Charon.”

Charon grunts, and grumbles, holding down Vaultie’s stare as he reaches out and grasps the small glass in his oversized hands.

They take a shot, then another. And when Vaultie starts babbling incessantly about the sky, rosy cheeked and glassy eyed, Gob urges them to come up to the roof with him. There’s a rickety ladder that comes down from the back bedroom ceiling that leads up to the roof when the big sign on top needs repainting or a tile needs to be replaced. All three of them climb it, with an unopened beer in hand and two more in the back pockets of Gob’s pants.

“I _love_ the sky, i-it’s—it’s so big, y’know?” Adam talks and talks, and Charon has one hand on the splintering wood of the fold out ladder, and the other is hovering somewhat behind his ass; he can’t decide if it’s there in case the tipsy kid teeters back, or because he’s so close to shoving him up the rest of the way. But Adam finally takes the few last rungs up. “And the stars—the stars, g-gosh god damn, y’know?”

Gob laughs, far away and already on the roof. “I know… they’re nice enough up here, I don’t always mind painting…”

Gob’s voice seems to drift away. Vaultie stops, halfway between inside and out, and Charon hears that small “ _Wow_ ” that passes his lips before he hauls his body the rest of the way out, the sound of his feet scrambling and stumbling against the tin sheets.

Charon pops out into the cool breeze, and he understands, in a way. He is old, and bitter. He has seen skies so clear and star filled, he saw the sky flash and then thicken with nuclear rain, he’s seen sunsets and sunrises that would make Vaultie’s head spin. But maybe, he sees it. Maybe there’s something nice about the almost sleepy view of Megaton, and the dark wasteland beyond, and the smattering of stars lighting the way. He’s toeing the line of intoxication now, floating in a TV static haze, and he’s sure he should hate it more.

But he doesn’t, not really. Things feel awfully safe and idyllic, with the stars peaking through clouds hanging stiff and thick like steel wool. He climbs out and onto the roof. Gob and Vaultie are already seated with their back against the sign declaring it ‘Moriarity’s Bar’ and their beers inbetween them.

As he goes to sit at Vaultie’s side, opposite of Gob, the ghoul silently hands him over a drink. Their eyes meet; there is no malice or resentment there. He looks passively content, even, hanging a bottle to the man that aided Ahzrukhal’s reign in the 9th Circle as drug peddler and official pain in his and Carol’s ass.

He wonders if Gob know Ahzrukhal is dead; he wonders if he knows he was killed by his hand, or does he think the ghoul still lives, that he was spared and Charon did nothing.

Charon says nothing. Then again, Gob doesn’t think like him, think like them. He went out to strike his fortune and ended up being an indentured barback that got beaten within an inch of his life every other month. He takes the proffered bottle and grunts his thanks, settling heavily back near Vaultie. He hears and feels the sign shake underneath his weight.

“Nice weather tonight.” Gob murmurs, his lips hugging the mouth of his bottle. Vaultie nods, sandwiched between the two ghouls.

“It’s great. The stars—it’s great.”

Gob takes Vaultie’s chattery questions and probing about pre-war times much better than himself. “Did you do this? Before? Drink beer and watch the stars with…” He hesitates and fiddles with the damp label of his beer bottle, bleached a yellowish-white with age. “F-friends?”

“Friends.” Gob repeated, and Charon can’t help but snort derisively, but it’s too quiet and gets lost in Gob’s chuckle. “Yeah, friends and stuff. We watched stars, I guess. There was this hill we all parked our cars at with, uh, girls we liked, watched stars and chatted.”

Charon snorts again. Vaultie just smiles. “That sounds fun. A-and—drive-ins too, right?”

Gob turns inward, towards Vaultie. “Oh, oh yeah. The drive-ins… ah, man, those were fun. Those were the days.” Charon watches his beer bottle. He wouldn’t know, even if he had wanted to speak. “You’d sit out with friends, watch a flick. You always had to make sure they gave you a good radio to hang off the edge of your car door if your friends had a shitty car radio—“

“H-how, uhm, how were cars?”

They talk so easily, or as easily as Vaultie can, his thoughts always drifting and his words jumbled, especially while intoxicated. Charon leans back, lets his head tilt towards the sky and lets his eyes wander. The fast paced clouds of the capital wasteland slide by.

Charon closes his eyes, folds the noise of their chatter into the background noise of the old airplane turbines rattling and the distant sounds of the few people still up moving. He could get used to this. It’s so dangerous, but he could get used to this.

He only notices the lull in conversation when Vaultie’s warm presence leaves his side; he blinks up at the stars, and turns his head back down to watch Vaultie crawling over the tetanus riddled shingles towards the edge of the roof.

“It—it’s a great view up here.” He calls back. Charon shifts his eyes towards Gob.

The bartender is smiling, almost playful as he cups a hand around his mouth and calls, a little too loud: “Don’t fall!” He laughs, and when he takes a swig his eyes meet Charon’s and he nearly chokes. Charon frowns, looks away.

“Sorry…”

Charon grunts. At his beer bottle, at Gob, neither can tell. “What for?”

Gob laughs again, but it’s not that same good-natured easiness. He’s nervous. “I didn’t—I don’t know. You have a mean glare, Charon.”

Charon snorts. “Force of habit.” He takes a long pull from his bottle, lets Gob be uncomfortable for a split moment longer. But when he’s done, he levels a gaze that he hopes isn’t as intense at Gob, his non-existent eyebrows rising. “It’s just my face. I’m not trying to scare you.”

The corners of Gob’s mouth twitch just slightly upward. He lifts his bottle and tilts it towards Charon. “Force of habit.”

Vaultie looks over his shoulder, perched on the edge of the roof as the pair of ghoul’s behind him chuckle and clink their bottles together. He laughs, too, but he’s not sure why and it’s really only because he realizes he’s all alone on the edge, suddenly, and his stomach feels weird when he looks over the edge. Charon focuses on Vaultie. Even after this time, his face still looks strange with a smile on it.

“You know, from up here—good sniper perch.” Vaultie turns back to the town, glances over his shoulder. “Almost as good as Stockholm’s view.”

“That so, Bungalow Bill?” Charon asks. He feels himself sagging even more against the sign, slipping down and letting his legs spread wide and relaxed.

It goes right over Vaultie’s head. But he’s surprised by Gob’s voice chiming in, just wavering on sing-song: “Yeah, what did you kill, Bungalow Bill?”

Charon opens his mouth, turns to Gob. He’s not sure, but no—Gob’s grinning, he understood, and it occurs to him that of course, some ghoul that grew up in America would understand, catch the reference. He shakes his head with some mirth. “That’s—huhn. It’s been a while since anyone got that.”

“A cheesy classic rock reference?”

Charon frowns, pointing at Gob. The ghoul raises his hands in mock defense. Vaultie’s eyes flicker between the two of them, utterly confused. Gob laughs, “Hey, hey. I was more of a classic punk fan, being fifteen and all when the bombs fell, than a classic rock fan, but Beatles aren’t that bad.”

Charon grunts, rolls his shoulders, but much to the amazement of Vaultie he’s still smiling. He tries to hide it behind his beer. “Not bad at all.”

Gob laughs, quietly, and they all settle back into amicable silence. Vaultie finally crawls away from the edge and settles back in between them, close and snug out of drunkenness and a strange sense of camaraderie Vaultie’s never felt in the Vault. Charon pulls a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, well-worn and near empty. He doesn’t bother offering Vaultie one; he doesn’t smoke, didn’t grow up with it. But he does gesture towards Gob. He takes one, and Charon lights a match and passes it once he’s done, Vaultie being the middle man handing it over.

They smoke, and finish their beers. Vaultie’s head is heavy on Charon’s shoulder. He clears his throat just as the sun starts to peek far off over the horizon, goes to say something to his companions. Vaultie is fast asleep, face pillowed by his curls, and Gob has nodded off, arms crossed over his chest, his chin tucked in. Charon laughs to himself. He has another cigarette. He watches the sun rise, and when it’s truly morning he wakes Vaultie up, and Vaultie wakes Gob up, and they head back inside.

\--

Charon stands off to the side impassively as Vaultie drills the remnants on proper shooting technique. He is a good leader. With his suit on and the men’s blind adoration, there’s a strange confidence he’s acquired. The men are rusty, but take well to the drills, suddenly soldiers with purpose, reinvigorated to have a higher up by their side.

The commander has been hesitant, which is what makes him the captain and the rest foot soldiers. He’s looking for a hiccup, a fault in Vaultie’s exterior. Charon knows he must have noticed that Vaultie has not shown his face to the others yet.

But Vaultie has taken to his renewed designation with pleasure. There’s purpose there, and praise, and the men treat him with respect, and Charon is so proud to stand by his side.

“Do you find them satisfactory?” The Captain asks him. He had lined the remnants up out in the courtyard to show him their ability. All of them had Chinese Assault rifles—even the one with his arm in a makeshift sling, his eyes downcast and his body flinching every time Charon walked past. They have dummies out here strung up, mostly the clothes of deceased raiders that had wandered into the factory stuffed with wasteland grass. They shoot in near unison, with precision.

Charon had warned him to tread carefully with the men. Not explicitly, of course; to actually outright command Vaultie, at this point, would make his stomach roil, but it was in the careful lilt of his tone and stilted words.

Vaultie isn’t obtuse. He performs, his shoulders back and facing towards the men lined up: “Satisfactory enough. Your men have kept themselves as honed as they possibly could.”

The Captain nods, seemingly pleased, though his jaw is just as set as Charon’s. A man in the line-up aiming reloads his assault rifle, and the telltale sound of the clip jamming snaps through the din of gunfire. Vaultie seems to perk up, leaving Charon’s side. He is slow, but has the tenacity of healthy youth despite it all. He’s going to be okay, as long as he rests.

“A broken weapon will kill you faster than any.” Vaultie says, as if he’s some wise sage to be listened to, taking the weapon from the remnant’s hands. His dirt-encrusted fingertips brush the ghoul’s hand for a little too long as he takes it from his hands.

Charon reacts. He jerks the gun from Vaultie’s hand, and the Lone Wanderer flinches. The remnant is too surprised to realize the skin that touched his, dirty and calloused as it was, was too soft, too smooth.

“I apologize,” The soldier says preemptively as Charon glowers at him, tossing the gun roughly back to the soldier.

“Don’t patronize the Lieutenant.”

The remnant shrinks, and flinches. Vaultie grabs Charon’s shoulder.

“It is fine—“

Charon turns, his lip curling back. “You should not have to deal with such idiocy. Two centuries and these men cannot even keep their guns maintained to the basic level of being able to fire.” Vaultie is smart as a whip and loved learning Mandarin in the vault, but even his intelligence is being pushed to the brink with the amount of words and the pace of them coming from native speakers. Charon, two centuries rusty, lets the words ricochet against his teeth before Vaultie even has to try and speak. Even behind his helmet, his hesitation is clear.

He lets go of Charon, and turns on his heel, stomping towards the door of the courtyard.

The Captain watches them with a careful expression as Vaultie shouts, nearly through the doorway, “Come.”

Charon stalks behind Vaultie. They’re nearly halfway to their shared room when Vaultie grabs Charon by the shoulders and twists him around, pressing him to a nook in the hallway. It’s not a slam—he’s barely recovered, weak and limping, but the intention is clear. Charon clears his employer by at least a good foot, and he weighs more than him in raw muscle alone, but he allows his body to be pushed into place.

“Charon—“

He struggles with the name, then stops, tearing one hand away from his fierce grip on his shoulder to press the button on the side of his helmet. The impenetrable orange visor rises to reveal wild eyes and sweat-slicked curls pressed to his forehead. Charon hisses.

“You cannot—“

Vaultie doesn’t reply in Mandarin, but hissed English: “I-I can do anything I _want_. You…” He digs his fingers into the bone and sinew of his shoulder. It feels like a punch, coming from Vaultie, this rough handling. “You’re not good here.”

“I have been serving you well, as is my designat--”

“ _No_ ,” Vaultie snaps, abruptly. The silence is immediate. His voice has never taken such a tone before, and he’s actually staring Charon down. He looks terrified, his eyes watery. “What is it that you want? Do you want me to give your contract to them?”

Charon goes rigid. Vaultie pushes onward, “D-do… do you want to stay here? What do you _want_? Why are we here still? I’m healthy enough to leave, I can leave—“

“No you cannot. Your stamina is shot.” Charon interrupts, louder and harsher than intended; Vaultie pulls back, and now it is Charon pushing forward by taking a step. Something raw is striking out at his master’s outstretched hand instead of taking it to pull himself up, and fierce emotion is rushing through his body. It is defensive, and it is potent. Vaultie stumbles back. Charon takes another step. “Your wounds are just barely healed over. One wrong move and your side could split open. How will I get you out of DC alive?”

Vaultie makes a small sound, a threatening hiccup, and Charon grits his teeth. “No— _none of that_.” Vaultie’s face crumples at his words. Facing him fully, Charon is so much larger than him, broad and tall and pushing him to the opposite side of the hallway. “I am not bending to your infantile sense of justice and the fact we have not saved some inconsiderate wastelander recently just for you to get gutted in the metro.”

Vaultie frowns, his face crinkling, “I don’t—this isn’t about _me_. This isn’t—this isn’t about me. Th-this is about you.”

There is silence. Charon—does not understand.

“You’re not—doing well here. Just because I’m not good doesn’t mean we—w-we need to stay here, and hurt you, instead. This isn’t—isn’t you, I think, and the—we need to get out, because _you’re_ not doing well here.”

Charon’s first reaction is anger. He doesn’t understand, doesn’t see why Vaultie cares at all. Almost feels _offended_ that Vaultie seems to want to put his own health behind Charon. He, a machine, a tool. Valuable, yes, but not priceless. Not important. Fury surges up through him, entirely foreign and so strong his jaw is clenching and he feels his teeth squeak under the pressure.

“You have not yet healed.”

“You’re getting _hurt_.”

He doesn’t understand, cannot comprehend. His employer is so _weak_. He can shoot a man’s head that’s just breaching the horizon, can walk all day and all night crouched down like an animal, but he is so weak. He is soft, and too kind for a wasteland. And he knows the kid acts as selfless as humans can act, only wanting thanks in return, a smile, something that indicated that he was good, and alright—

Charon turns and drives his fist straight into the wall; the worn plaster turns to dust under the force of the blow. He is fragmenting.

“My entire purpose, my entire _designation_ is to keep you safe, and you seem to fight me at every turn-!” He jerks his hand out of the new hole, whirling to face Vaultie; the kid has clenched his jaw, brows furrowed, but his eyes are wet. “You are—“

“I am capable of saving _myself_. I-I—I did fine before you, I was okay!’

There are footsteps, clear and concise. Vaultie is quick. He slams his visor down in an instant. Charon turns towards the noise, defensive--

There are Vaultie’s fingers digging like needles into his neck, and his small body pressed hard against his as he crowds him back against the wall. “Were you trying to show off?” His voice has snapped to the steely resolve he takes on when his mask is down, layered with another safeguard of speaking in Mandarin; it almost doesn’t sound like him. “Is that why you felt the need to disobey?”

Charon doesn’t reply. Doesn’t say anything. An intrusive thought pierces the fog of his mind, sudden and fast: he should be on his knees, he should probably be prostrating himself. He is going to be stricken soon, justly, and his face is flinching in preparation of it. And—

_Okay. Okay. Okay._

There’s a hand on his side that’s not facing the commander. It has pushed up the hem of his shirt, just enough so that Vaultie’s bare, dirty fingers are touching the skin of his side, sensitive from lack of touch. He’s tapping out the affirmative sign in shaking, twisting fingers. An apology.

He’s brought back, to the present, swallowing hard and pressing himself back against the wall. Charon cannot see Vaultie’s face beyond the orange visor; he is incredibly relieved.

“If you do it again, I will take you out into the yard and flay the skin that’s left from your back. Understood?” Charon cannot see him, but he can hear the Captain’s footsteps retreating, having gotten his fill, if he believes the charade or not.

“Yes, Lieutenant Liúlàng —“

Lightning fast, faster than Charon could ever conceive Vaultie doing something so harsh, his hand shoots up from his neck to his chin, and twists his face towards him. The tapping on his side stops, and he goes to the trouble of using his free hand to shove his visor up once more, forces himself to stare into Charon’s eyes.

“I- I am _not_ your Lieutenant.”

The last consonant wavers. His eyebrows knit together, and he shakes his head, lets go of Charon’s chin and stalks down the hall.


	18. Chapter 18

_“Hey there, kids, boys and girls. Three-Dog here likes to keep positive, but I’ve been getting worried as of late. Has anyone seen one-oh-one and that stalwart ghoul manservant of his? It’s been almost a month… and nothing. That’s strange not to hear that shotgun boom or that sniper pow in that amount of time. Haven’t seen you visiting the Ghoulies in Underworld, haven’t heard a peep from Simms in Megaton praising your name. We’re all hoping you’re okay, kid. We’re hoping you’re okay.”_

\--

When Charon pushes open the door of Vaultie’s room, he jumps and twists around to face the door, silenced 10mm pistol in hand. Charon’s sure, wearing an extra Chinese jumpsuit they have given him and his gaunt, hollow expression, he must look exactly like them. Vaultie doesn’t shoot. His anxious expression melts, eyebrows knotting in worry with a smile on his lips.

“Charon?”

He closes the door behind him softly. Vaultie’s hands shake. Charon is halfway across the room when he realizes that Vaultie has only partially lowered the gun; he stops immediately, looking it over. The silence stretches long.

“Charon?” His voice quakes.

“That’s not my name.”

Vaultie blinks. He doesn’t lower his weapon. “Then what is?”

Charon rolls his shoulders. That was a stupid thing to say, but it’s true. Vaultie keeps holding onto his name like a life line and yet—it wasn’t his name, really. That was common with ghouls. Two centuries plus and the lawlessness of the wasteland after living some time in a near fascist pre-war America meant it was liberating being able to change your name freely. One of the few things in control when your nose was sliding off your face in chunks. Of course, his name wasn’t _Charon_ , he wasn’t born with the name of the Styx ferryman that just happened to lead lost souls through the underworlds of hell. Ahzrukhal thought he was so witty with his slapdash amalgamation of Greek and 14th century classic poetry, as if it could somehow escalate the dank smells and sights of a bar that catered mostly to junkies.

Charon raises his hand and wipes at his mouth, sighs in between his fingers. He can’t remember. Hasn’t thought about it in so long. He shrugs, long and slow, the movement exaggerated as it turns into a stretch. He feels sore, and old.

“I do not know.”

Vaultie hesitates. He finally points the pistol downward. “Do… you want a new name?”

Charon shakes his head. He is suddenly very, very tired. He closes the rest of the gap between him and his employer, and sits heavily at the foot of the bed, his back to the Lone Wanderer. He is so, _so_ tired, and he sits with his legs wide and his shoulders braced and his head in his hands. “No.”

Charon rubs at his face and exhales. He sits up suddenly, looking pointedly at the silenced 10mm resting on the bed. “You thought I was a threat?”

Vaultie almost looks guilty. He exhales, his hand hesitating near the pistol. He picks it back up, but then tosses it on the floor. “… no.”

It skitters across the floor, only stopped by the thin bedroll not too far from the bed. Charon rubs at his temples. Vaultie nervously stares at it, and the silence gets so anxious he practically whimpers: “… maybe. You’re—y-you’re not _you_.”

Charon frowns, nearly speaks, but Vaultie rushes out, “Not the Charon I know. I know you were—somebody else, before, a bodyguard. But now—“

Charon stares at Vaultie, and he withers under his deadpan. “I’m still a bodyguard.”

“You are more than a bodyguard. You--” He’s curling his hands, as if trying to find tangibility in the words he can’t exactly grasp from his mind. “I know I don’t know everything, but you know me, you know I think—I think you’re strong, and good. You’re really capable at doing really good.” He pauses, and wavers, his eyes flickering upward and a small smile crossing his face, “Even if you are a communist.”

Charon opens his mouth. Closes it, and smiles, and presses his hands to his eyes until he sees sparks in the darkness and just lets out a small, thin laugh. Vaultie’s face melts with relief and a hesitant smile. But he leans in, gentle, hunching over to make himself look small and unthreatening: “But, I’m… I’m serious. I don’t… want you to get hurt. For me, anymore.”

There is silence. After some time, Charon finally stands and retrieve the pistol. Vaultie tenses, momentarily, but relaxes as he sees Charon grab their molerat leather, rolling it out onto the bed between them. He starts to break the gun down. Vaultie sags into the bed, twists around to gingerly lie down on his good side, pillowing his head with an outstretched arm. He watches Charon’s fumbling fingers break down the gun in such familiar movements and sounds it’s like a lullaby. He could fall asleep to Charon breaking down their guns, cleaning them, maintaining them to peak perfection.

Maybe he understands why Charon was so angry at that remnant. He doesn’t really know—still doesn’t really know what happened, when he was human, only what he’s gathered by the way Charon has been acting. Doesn’t really know what Charon’s been through. All he knows is that two centuries of the wasteland can’t possibly be easy on a person, and if before was just as bad, well…

He doesn’t say it, but Vaultie thinks, he still turned out pretty good. Sure, he grumbles and grunts and complains but Charon—is good.

“I’m sorry.” Charon says, suddenly, and Vaultie blinks up from the bed at the ghoul who is focused entirely on the guns, his voice clipped. Vaultie notices the shake in his hands. “I was falling back on… old programming. And this is…” He puts the pistol down, exhales slow, grinding out, “You are right. This is not a good place for me. But…”

He does not want to be weak. He does not want to be weak, for Vaultie, for Adam. Doesn’t want to be weak for himself, because weakness means death, both physical and mental. It’s a strange weakness Vaultie inspires in him. He hates it less than other kinds. He picks the gun back up. He fumbles with it, mutters under his breath, “I want to keep you safe.”

Vaultie lays, quiet.

“How do you feel?” Charon murmurs, and when Vaultie glances up from the bed he finds Charon’s eyes on him.

Vaultie smiles thinly, stretching his body carefully as he lifts up his threadbare shirt. There are thick stitches there, but the wound isn’t red or enflamed. “It… itches. I think I need to teach you proper technique.”

Charon snorts, looking at his hands. “We have time here, then…“

Vaultie starts to ease himself up, and Charon trails off, rushing to set the clip in his hands down so that he has his arms free to aid him. But he waves him off. Vaultie sits up, and takes Charon’s hand. His own hand is shaking, but he squeezes it still, squeezes hard. He bows his head and Charon leans in, their foreheads touching.

“We need to leave.”

Charon tilts his face up, just a hair’s breadth away from his employer. Vaultie’s breath is hot against his face, and it shakes. He squeezes his hand again, hard, and Charon focuses his swimming vision on those big watery blue eyes peering through a curtain of mousey brown curls. He’s tracing his exposed muscles and bones of his knuckles with his fingertips. “We need to leave. We need to leave.”

\--

Even with the scratchy wool pulled over his face, Adam can feel snot running down from the biting cold. He is leaving Anchorage. He is going to leave. He will walk, and walk, across the untouched snow until his legs give out or he hits Canada or he doesn’t _know_ , but he’s leaving. He can’t forge ahead towards the Pulse fields. He is terrified.

His fingers go numb first. He hasn’t been able to feel his toes since he entered the simulation, really, so when his feet go numb he doesn’t even realize it. They’re there, and then suddenly he’s tripping over nothing and his feet don’t feel like much of anything.

The sky and snow starts to flicker around him, pixels flashing in the corner of his eyes warningly. The sun is beating down high overhead but it’s still so damn _cold_. Adam doesn’t know any better; doesn’t know if it should be warm, because of that sun, or if this was just another thing General Chase thought would toughen the recruits up and make him look like more of a hardass. Never-ending cold and snow.

He trips, again. And hits something. A barrier. A wall. When his body hits it there’s a ripple effect, a shimmer of iridescent squares that start from his body and move outward and up until he can’t follow it anymore; the wall is infinite. He shoves his numb shoulder against it, does it again, and again, and again.

“Hey! Hey, Adam!”

He ignores Benji. His voice is far enough away that he gets in a few more full-body shoves against the wall before he reaches him. It feels like concrete through his armor, jarring his body, rattling his teeth and his skull.

The gunnery sergeant grabs him by the shoulders, drags him back. “Hey, c’mon, buddy—“

“Let me _out!_ L-let… let me go!”

He rips out from his grasp, and falls in an uncoordinated pile into the snow. He is so numb. The snow is already soaking through his face mask. Benji kneels beside him. He almost looks like he understands.

“Hey… look. You’ll get out of this, soon. You just have to do the last mission.”

Adam hiccups into his face mask. Benji’s hands are heavy on his back, patting in steady thumps.

“Then you’ll be out. Alright? Walk with me, buddy?” Vaultie doesn’t move, doesn’t look at him. Benji’s voice is reedy and nervous as he adds, “Been a while since anyone got this far. You’re doing real great. You don’t think so but you almost got it.”

Benji touches his shoulder and Vaultie jerks his body away, into the snow, hard. “C’mon. You almost got it.”

“T-take me back… take me home.” His voice sounds far away, even to his own ears. Benji pats him again. The static fuzz rattles hard in his ears; it’s like after every mission, where he’s there and then there’s a dull roar and suddenly he’s—

not.


	19. sfw final chapter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's two versions of the final chapter. This is the SFW version!

They stride confidently through the halls of the factory. They are only spotted by one remnant, who bows reverently as they pass. Charon is tall, and confident, and Vaultie can see the muscles in his jaw work as he grimaces. They walk through the front doors.

They don’t look back.

Arlington Cemetery is achingly quiet, which is fitting for a place of rest, but strange for the downtown capital area. It is not completely devoid of life. Even walking straight backed and tall, they spot the group of three strung-out raiders well ahead of being spotted themselves. Three well-placed shots take them out.

They walk amongst the rows and rows of crumbling headstones, crosses, and weeping angels. They stop carefully. Adam traces his fingers against weathered names. Inexplicably, one graveside vase is filled with wasteland weeds, carefully bundled with twine, as if left by someone. As the sun sets, Vaultie turns his radio to project sound outward, the tinny speaker on his wrist sweetly crooning words of the time before, of civilization, of dear hearts and gentle people. He thinks of the Vault, and Megaton, and his Dad. Charon bumps into his side once, and he stops thinking.

Vaultie picks his steps haphazardly through the graveyard, weaving like a drunk man, and Charon follows. Just as the sun starts to dip below the horizon, they come upon a house. The door handle is coated with years of dirt from disuse, and locked; it’s deftly picked, and Charon pushes the rusted hinges open with his shoulders, gun cradled in his arms. They scour the entire house twice before declaring it safe and barricading the front door with the couch and coffee table piled on top of each other.

Against their survival training, against their better judgement, and like so many other wastelanders before them they head underground. They head into the basement, dimly lit, with a strange shrine tucked in the corner and mannequins lacking their pre-war clothes. And there are bottles upon bottles of unskunked pre-war wine, perfectly held in the cellar, corks still a touch moist when they each open a bottle for themselves.

In the basement, the microfusion powered emergency lamps of those who came long before flicker. It is almost serene, in the cool damp of the cellar, with the warm thermonuclear glow and the racks of wine and Abraham Lincoln’s calm smile projecting out towards them. Charon knows that he shouldn’t, but Vaultie presses a bottle into his hands in a way that feels like a command. Charon opens his bottle of wine by smashing the neck of it against a far corner wall, and Vaultie laughs. He doesn’t know why, but he laughs, and he opens his the same way in a shower of glass shards and the soft music of glass falling to the ground. There are candles at that strange altar, and Charon lights them, for more visibility, as Vaultie takes the photo from the frame. He rolls it up tight, and without much fanfare, explains, “Abraham Washington might want it.”

They set up camp, rolling out their bedrolls and setting aside their knapsacks. They eat fistfuls of sugar bombs and spam cubed with molerat jerky topping and some sort of weird processed orange cheese sandwiched in between. They take swigs of their wine, and they sit across from each other, eating languidly, in amiable quiet.

Vaultie is the one who breaks the silence, turning his Pip-boy radio on once more.

Charon watches him stand. Surprisingly, or maybe not, he walks over to him, and sits by his side. Their shoulders bump.

They do not say anything for a while. Again, it is Vaultie that breaks the silence: “What… would happen if I tore up your contract?”

Charon shakes his head, his features turning ugly. “It… The paper itself does not matter. The bond can be spoken. Still, the paper does make things easier.”

Vaultie nods, if hesitantly. His words are stilted, “What… wh-what if I gave you… to Willow. Your-- your contract.”

Charon’s face contorts even more, and he twists his body to face Vaultie. He can swear he can feel his face crack at the facial expressions he’s currently holding, but he grinds out, “If that is what you wish.” Something is snapping in him, something very sore and just barely healed over—he had _thought_ that—

They were okay. They had left. That his psyche is still so damn tender and he finds English sticking thick in his throat but—he had done it all for _him_. He had good intentions in the beginning. But they had both survived, only for Vaultie to pawn him off. It made sense. He was dangerous. _It happens_ didn’t excuse his actions. “I am sure she would utilize me well. However, I think I have done much good with you.”

“I want to kiss you again.”

Charon’s mouth hangs open, snaps shut, and any words that he was going to say are swallowed. Vaultie’s blurted confession suddenly weighs his eyes elsewhere, away from the boy’s panicked face and sweaty palms and over to the flickering candles. Vaultie freezes like a deer caught in the headlights, and his words fall out, jumbled, clattering between his wringing hands and crashing like cymbals on the floor. ”I want—I want to kiss you. I want to kiss you. When you can say no. I, uhm, I don’t—d-don’t….”

He swallows, thickly, looking everywhere else but Charon. But then he forces himself to look back up, and Charon has finally focused back on him, his face unreadable; he’s never been able to read Charon well, can’t read anyone well and Vaultie feels like he’s drowning in his rheumy eyes. A million thoughts and they all amount to what if he’s wrong, what if he’s mistaken Charon’s hardwiring for more than enforced companionship, and what if he’s mistaking his own loneliness of the wasteland and an absent life for this—

Charon shifts, and Vaultie holds his hands out to stop his movements. “I don’t—I don’t want ant pheromones.” He explains, exclaims even, sudden and firm. “I want… does that make sense? I want…”

His voice dies in his throat as Charon takes his wrists firmly in his hands, and they go slack, “I don’t want…. I want you to want—I want you to want—“

Charon’s hands move from his wrists, sliding up to Vaultie’s biceps. He does not pull him close, he does not tug, but he uses the hands on Vaultie’s shoulders to steady himself as he leans forward. Vaultie automatically tilts his face up. Charon kisses him, once, chaste, and then his hands slide up rough against his neck, settle on cupping his face. Vaultie surges forward for the second kiss, and the third, and the fourth, as Charon’s hands move to the back of his head and Vaultie’s lips part to let Charon in.

Charon sighs into his mouth, and swallows his small sounds of need, and he flexes his fingers indulgently against the nape of Vaultie’s neck, the tangle of curls that fall there.

Their lips part, and Charon wraps an arm around Vaultie and hauls him bodily over to the nearest bedroll, so gentle and careful not to touch his bandaged side. Vaultie lets out a small, nervous laugh when the back of his head touches down. Charon frames his body with his arms and legs, straddling but not looming.

“This is not ant pheromones.” He rasps, once more cupping Adam’s face with one hand. The Lone Wanderer sucks in a breath of air; his eyes close as Charon’s fingers trace down his neck, and just slide under the collar of his vault suit.

It is not ant pheromones, and it is not the contract, it is something entirely different, nobler and more furious than any previous command or creed Charon has fought for. This is the burn low in his belly, and it is the way his fingers fumble when Vaultie looks up at him and arches his back with hooded eyes and a shy smile as he works on the front zipper of his vault suit. This is not the hardwiring of his past and the loyalty of his contract, but it is the drumming of his employer’s fingers across his armor and the way he mourns fallen friendly robots and the movement of his hands as he tucks pre-war catalog pages into hard medical textbooks to keep them safe.

Charon stops unzipping his suit just past his chest, and he rubs a rough finger against his collarbone. Vaultie shudders and exhales, twisting his head. What does Charon want? He wants… he wants…

“Command me.”

His eyes are drawn to Adam’s neck, and the way he swallows thickly, brows furrowing with momentary worry. “What?”

Charon licks his lips. “Command me to do as I wish for an hour. Let me show you.”

He is the Lone Wanderer and he is the last, best hope for Charon’s humanity. Vaultie leans up and whispers those words, and the curve of his smile against the side of his face feels so serene.

\--

They wake up the next day, shivering nude in the damp coolness of the morning, the candles having long since burned themselves out. They dress in silence, but their hands are talkative, bumping and brushing against the other, going out of their way to help the other buckle their armor up or zip them into their suit.

After the bedrolls have been tied to their packs and a few extra bottles of wine tucked away, Charon hands Vaultie his helmet. He smiles up at him, and leans in to press a kiss to the corner of Charon’s mouth. And then to his mouth. And Charon grumbles a bit through his smile about getting back on the road in between pecks, the helmet in Vaultie’s hands sandwiched in between them.

“You’re right.” Vaultie says, almost sighs. He is so love struck. It makes Charon’s gut ache. “We should… we should head out.”

“To Rivet City?” Charon questions, placing a warm hand on Vaultie’s hip. He nods, and pulls the helmet of his stealth suit on.

“Megaton. Then… yeah. Rivet City.”

They trudge out of the basement and up to the first floor of Arlington house, and when they exit Vaultie eases himself into a crouch. It is familiar, more familiar than the rasped Mandarin that still echoes in his ears. He thinks it should be different, now, but it’s not. Vaultie’s cloak flickers on. Charon watches the barely visible form turn around, reach out. His fingers find his arm, and tap there.

Charon settles his hand on top of Vaultie’s. Taps out an affirmative. _Go_. And then he rubs the pad of his thumb over Vaultie’s knuckles. Not a motion they’ve given any meaning to, but Vaultie stiffens under the touch and then pulls away, shy. Charon’s smile is slight, and easy.

They head out, together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is it; not the end of their journey, but at the least, the end of this part of their tale. I'm afraid you guys were thinking it would be a firefight in the end, but this was always just the tale of them. I hope everyone enjoyed. If possible, please leave a comment, a critique, whatever-- but I'd love one last hurrah from y'all. :') Because honestly people commenting, leaving kudos, saying such nice stuff in the bookmarks-- that kept me going. So thank you! And I hope you'll be reading more from me soon.


	20. nsfw final chapter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the NSFW version of the final chapter. Enjoy!

They stride confidently through the halls of the factory. They are only spotted by one remnant, who bows reverently as they pass. Charon is tall, and confident, and Vaultie can see the muscles in his jaw work as he grimaces. They walk through the front doors.

They don’t look back.

Arlington Cemetery is achingly quiet, which is fitting for a place of rest, but strange for the downtown capital area. It is not completely devoid of life. Even walking straight backed and tall, they spot the group of three strung-out raiders well ahead of being spotted themselves. Three well-placed shots take them out.

They walk amongst the rows and rows of crumbling headstones, crosses, and weeping angels. They stop carefully. Adam traces his fingers against weathered names. Inexplicably, one graveside vase is filled with wasteland weeds, carefully bundled with twine, as if left by someone. As the sun sets, Vaultie turns his radio to project sound outward, the tinny speaker on his wrist sweetly crooning words of the time before, of civilization, of dear hearts and gentle people. He thinks of the Vault, and Megaton, and his Dad. Charon bumps into his side once, and he stops thinking.

Vaultie picks his steps haphazardly through the graveyard, weaving like a drunk man, and Charon follows. Just as the sun starts to dip below the horizon, they come upon a house. The door handle is coated with years of dirt from disuse, and locked; it’s deftly picked, and Charon pushes the rusted hinges open with his shoulders, gun cradled in his arms. They scour the entire house twice before declaring it safe and barricading the front door with the couch and coffee table piled on top of each other.

Against their survival training, against their better judgement, and like so many other wastelanders before them they head underground. They head into the basement, dimly lit, with a strange shrine tucked in the corner and mannequins lacking their pre-war clothes. And there are bottles upon bottles of unskunked pre-war wine, perfectly held in the cellar, corks still a touch moist when they each open a bottle for themselves.

In the basement, the microfusion powered emergency lamps of those who came long before flicker. It is almost serene, in the cool damp of the cellar, with the warm thermonuclear glow and the racks of wine and Abraham Lincoln’s calm smile projecting out towards them. Charon knows that he shouldn’t, but Vaultie presses a bottle into his hands in a way that feels like a command. Charon opens his bottle of wine by smashing the neck of it against a far corner wall, and Vaultie laughs. He doesn’t know why, but he laughs, and he opens his the same way in a shower of glass shards and the soft music of glass falling to the ground. There are candles at that strange altar, and Charon lights them, for more visibility, as Vaultie takes the photo from the frame. He rolls it up tight, and without much fanfare, explains, “Abraham Washington might want it.”

They set up camp, rolling out their bedrolls and setting aside their knapsacks. They eat fistfuls of sugar bombs and spam cubed with molerat jerky topping and some sort of weird processed orange cheese sandwiched in between. They take swigs of their wine, and they sit across from each other, eating languidly, in amiable quiet.

Vaultie is the one who breaks the silence, turning his Pip-boy radio on once more.

Charon watches him stand. Surprisingly, or maybe not, he walks over to him, and sits by his side. Their shoulders bump.

They do not say anything for a while. Again, it is Vaultie that breaks the silence: “What… would happen if I tore up your contract?”

Charon shakes his head, his features turning ugly. “It… The paper itself does not matter. The bond can be spoken. Still, the paper does make things easier.”

Vaultie nods, if hesitantly. His words are stilted, “What… wh-what if I gave you… to Willow. Your-- your contract.”

Charon’s face contorts even more, and he twists his body to face Vaultie. He can swear he can feel his face crack at the facial expressions he’s currently holding, but he grinds out, “If that is what you wish.” Something is snapping in him, something very sore and just barely healed over—he had _thought_ that—

They were okay. They had left. That his psyche is still so damn tender and he finds English sticking thick in his throat but—he had done it all for _him_. He had good intentions in the beginning. But they had both survived, only for Vaultie to pawn him off. It made sense. He was dangerous. _It happens_ didn’t excuse his actions. “I am sure she would utilize me well. However, I think I have done much good with you.”

“I want to kiss you again.”

Charon’s mouth hangs open, snaps shut, and any words that he was going to say are swallowed. Vaultie’s blurted confession suddenly weighs his eyes elsewhere, away from the boy’s panicked face and sweaty palms and over to the flickering candles. Vaultie freezes like a deer caught in the headlights, and his words fall out, jumbled, clattering between his wringing hands and crashing like cymbals on the floor. ”I want—I want to kiss you. I want to kiss you. When you can say no. I, uhm, I don’t—d-don’t….”

He swallows, thickly, looking everywhere else but Charon. But then he forces himself to look back up, and Charon has finally focused back on him, his face unreadable; he’s never been able to read Charon well, can’t read anyone well and Vaultie feels like he’s drowning in his rheumy eyes. A million thoughts and they all amount to what if he’s wrong, what if he’s mistaken Charon’s hardwiring for more than enforced companionship, and what if he’s mistaking his own loneliness of the wasteland and an absent life for this—

Charon shifts, and Vaultie holds his hands out to stop his movements. “I don’t—I don’t want ant pheromones.” He explains, exclaims even, sudden and firm. “I want… does that make sense? I want…”

His voice dies in his throat as Charon takes his wrists firmly in his hands, and they go slack, “I don’t want…. I want you to want—I want you to want—“

Charon’s hands move from his wrists, sliding up to Vaultie’s biceps. He does not pull him close, he does not tug, but he uses the hands on Vaultie’s shoulders to steady himself as he leans forward. Vaultie automatically tilts his face up. Charon kisses him, once, chaste, and then his hands slide up rough against his neck, settle on cupping his face. Vaultie surges forward for the second kiss, and the third, and the fourth, as Charon’s hands move to the back of his head and Vaultie’s lips part to let Charon in.

Charon sighs into his mouth, and swallows his small sounds of need, and he flexes his fingers indulgently against the nape of Vaultie’s neck, the tangle of curls that fall there.

Their lips part, and Charon wraps an arm around Vaultie and hauls him bodily over to the nearest bedroll, so gentle and careful not to touch his bandaged side. Vaultie lets out a small, nervous laugh when the back of his head touches down. Charon frames his body with his arms and legs, straddling but not looming.

“This is not ant pheromones.” He rasps, once more cupping Adam’s face with one hand. The Lone Wanderer sucks in a breath of air; his eyes close as Charon’s fingers trace down his neck, and just slide under the collar of his vault suit.

It is not ant pheromones, and it is not the contract, it is something entirely different, nobler and more furious than any previous command or creed Charon has fought for. This is the burn low in his belly, and it is the way his fingers fumble when Vaultie looks up at him and arches his back with hooded eyes and a shy smile as he works on the front zipper of his vault suit. This is not the hardwiring of his past and the loyalty of his contract, but it is the drumming of his employer’s fingers across his armor and the way he mourns fallen friendly robots and the movement of his hands as he tucks pre-war catalog pages into hard medical textbooks to keep them safe.

Charon stops unzipping his suit just past his chest, and he rubs a rough finger against his collarbone. Vaultie shudders and exhales, twisting his head. What does Charon want? He wants… he wants…

“Command me.”

His eyes are drawn to Adam’s neck, and the way he swallows thickly, brows furrowing with momentary worry. “What?”

Charon licks his lips. “Command me to do as I wish for an hour. Let me show you.”

He is the Lone Wanderer and he is the last, best hope for Charon’s humanity. Vaultie leans up and whispers those words, and the curve of his smile against the side of his face feels so serene.

Charon feels goosebumps travel up the thick skin of his spine. Anything he would like to do… he is still confined by the finite goal posts of keeping Adam alive and himself alive, but they don’t influence what he wants. What he wants—his thumb is still rubbing circles against his collar bone, and he removes his fingers from inside his collar to grasp back at the zipper of the Vault Suit and slide it down.

They have seen each other naked before, in much more modest settings, but this is different. It is different when Charon peels the suit off of him and reveals his pale skin beneath, and it’s different when Vaultie’s fingers fumble over the buckles of Charon’s armor, and they shed their exoskeletons. He knows what _he_ wants but it amazes him, the subtle way his employer’s fingers stray and take their time pulling his ragged undershirt up and over his head, the way he touches his chest, eager yet shy. _I want to kiss you again_ , as if a ghoul was worthy of being kissed, desired in some way.

And in anyone else, Charon would not have noticed the way he touches, but the movement of Vaultie’s fingers is everything. Vaultie is enjoying the feel of his skin. His fingers stray because every single part, the hardened, exposed muscle, a rough patch, gnarled scars, all of it is exhilarating and new and so different. He is so soft underneath him, and all he can do is touch Charon’s weathered skin, praise him with his fingers and tap messages of adoration on his flesh. He can’t make eye contact, but he sees everything in the drag of his hands down the curve of Charon’s shoulder blades and the small circles he rubs up his ribs.

Charon kisses his jaw, and bites gently there at the curve where his neck meets, enjoys the feel of it underneath his mouth, the way Vaultie’s moans dissolve into laughs and fidgets as Charon’s mouth dips lower. And lower, and lower. Charon mouths words against his skin, in English and Mandarin and who remembers whatever other words and languages he can speak, but he says them all, as he dips down—

“Charon, Charon—“

The Lone Wanderer is gasping and thrashing, already overwhelmed; it occurs to Charon, in the back of his mind, that he is probably even more inexperienced than him, though this is also Charon’s first foray into a sexual experience he wants.

He wants… he wants…

Vaultie whimpers and even his _breathing_ sounds eager in his ears, and he can feel his employer’s eyes as he drags his rough lips down his shaking stomach. He pauses, to kiss and bite as he pleases, to feel the give of soft flesh or the hard quiver of muscle underneath his tongue. He sucks on a hipbone, because he can and all he wants to do are things that elicit moans and earn rifle-calloused hands twisting in his few strands of remaining hair.

Charon rumbles out a small laugh that makes Vaultie squirm. “Wh-what’s funny?”

Charon laughs again, dark and smoky, and as he presses his lips those few more inches downward he raises his arms up and slides his hands down the length of Vaultie’s body, relishing the feel of him arching underneath his blunt nails. His hands slide down, and stop at the edge of the vault suit, taking little time to hook his fingers into the band and pull it the rest of the way down.

Charon swallows him whole and Vaultie yelps, squirms so much Charon has to hold his hips down so he doesn’t choke. It’s such a strange feeling for him to _want_ , but he wants so badly, wants everything. It’s the feel of him in his mouth, and the smell of him as his lips slide down and press to the dark thatch of hair at the base. He is slow, and a little sloppy, but he wants to take his time and remember what this feels like for as long as he lies. When Vaultie’s breathing starts to quicken and his hands tangle in the strands of red hair he has left he swallows around his cock and slides up and off with a wet sound.

“Do we have grease of some sort?” Charon mutters. Vaultie blinks, exhales, his cheeks so pink and flushed.

“I think there’s—there’s petroleum jelly in the first aid kit.”

Charon leans over to grab Vaultie’s pack and drag it towards them. Vaultie sits up, bracing himself with his elbows. His gaze is unapologetic and obvious. “Can… can I touch you?”

Charon glances up, eyebrows raised, having finally found the tin of jelly. He unscrews the lid. “You really want to?”

Vaultie pushes himself to his knees, crawls the short distance between him and Charon. “Of—o-of course,” He stutters. His hands hesitate, but not out of disgust; facing each other, he wraps a hand around his cock, starts to stroke him. A pleased sigh escapes Charon and he leans in. On their knees, he is still taller than his employer, and he has to duck his head to press his lips to his ear and kiss the shell there.

“I cannot feel it unless you’re firmer.” He mumbles, almost ashamedly, but Vaultie listens and eagerly tightens his grip. Covertly, Charon dips his fingers into the tin, reaches behind. The pain is foreign but not anything compared to what he has been through before, and Vaultie doesn’t even notice as his attention is entirely focused on Charon.

“Wh-what— what did you need jelly for—oh.”

Vaultie sounds out, inadvertently, as his eyes follow Charon’s arm that is behind him. His eyes are as wide as saucers, watching Charon, gaze trailing on his fingers moving steadily, steadily behind him.

“I want you.”

It’s as simple as that.

They switch positions, though it takes some time with hands touching and reluctant to leave, with Vaultie’s wound, but Charon gets to his hands and knees and Vaultie stutters so badly the words aren’t even coherent. Charon was raised with no religion except the military, no God except the Chairman, and even then they’ve been dead for two centuries for all intents and purposes in his life. But he doesn’t know what else to rumble out but _my god_ and gentle curses in Mandarin newly remembered as Vaultie’s hands grasp his hips and he pushes, slow and steady, shivering from the restraint.

He starts slow, and uncertain, and Charon’s back arches underneath him as he increases the pace steadily, fingers holding tight over the exposed bone of his hips. It burns, and he hasn’t—has he ever? Charon can’t remember. Doesn’t matter, not in this moment, as Vaultie drapes his body over his back, his hips moving in earnest, clutching at his chest and nearly sobbing his name like a prayer in his ear: Charon. Charon. _Charon_.

It’s over, for Vaultie, too soon; the boy stiffens on top of him, his thrusts grow erratic, and Charon sighs, not close to his own release but sighs for the feel of the body sagging on top of him, the empathetic feel of his pleasure found and body spent. Vaultie dawdles, for a moment, as Charon bares his weight and tries to control his breathing; and then he’s mumbling fond, bashful apologies, kissing the back of his neck, the exposed nobs of his spine. He hisses when Vaultie removes his softening cock and there is another barrage of apologies, a pause in his words, and then—

Charon groans, arches his back as fingers press against him and a hand reaches around to grab his neglected cock. He wants to say—he hadn’t expected it, any reciprocation, didn’t need it, but there’s something especially arousing in his inexperienced hands so eager to help that they’re shaking with excitement. And it’s working, Charon finds, as he twists his head to see Vaultie’s dark, hooded eyes on his body and his mouth quirked in a shy smile, chewing on his lower lip, face flushed after his own orgasm.

He has never seen someone look at him in that way. It is dangerous, and Charon wishes he would stop, because it has to be against his contract, something so life-threatening as the quiet adoration being projected with his gaze alone towards him. He finds that spot with his two fingers crooked, and something behind Charon’s eyes sparks like fireworks. But that’s not what undoes him; it’s the small gasp of pride Vaultie makes when he realizes he’s found it, found something good, the light in his eyes, and Charon is bucking into his hand and growling out his orgasm, knees buckling.

Charon braces his forehead against the bedroll, closes his eyes and tries to recollect himself and calm his breathing. He feels Vaultie press a kiss to the curve of his lower back, and remove his fingers carefully. “Are you… was that okay?”

Charon snorts. Laughs. He lies down and rolls onto his back, and Vaultie crawls into his arms and shivers. He drags his fingers through his hair, watches the candles melt slowly on the altar across from them. Watches the way the light frames Vaultie’s face, his sleepy expression half buried against his chest.

He lets the time tick by. He can feel when the hour is up. But nothing changes, not really. Vaultie’s breathing starts to even out as he falls asleep. Every time Charon looks down he feels his chest clench, so he counts ceiling tiles instead, and listens to his breathing, and lets his mind wonder how after all this time, he got so damn lucky.

\---

They wake up the next day, shivering nude in the damp coolness of the morning, the candles having long since burned themselves out. They dress in silence, but their hands are talkative, bumping and brushing against the other, going out of their way to help the other buckle their armor up or zip them into their suit.

After the bedrolls have been tied to their packs and a few extra bottles of wine tucked away, Charon hands Vaultie his helmet. He smiles up at him, and leans in to press a kiss to the corner of Charon’s mouth. And then to his mouth. And Charon grumbles a bit through his smile about getting back on the road in between pecks, the helmet in Vaultie’s hands sandwiched in between them.

“You’re right.” Vaultie says, almost sighs. He is so love struck. It makes Charon’s gut ache. “We should… we should head out.”

“To Rivet City?” Charon questions, placing a warm hand on Vaultie’s hip. He nods, and pulls the helmet of his stealth suit on.

“Megaton. Then… yeah. Rivet City.”

They trudge out of the basement and up to the first floor of Arlington house, and when they exit Vaultie eases himself into a crouch. It is familiar, more familiar than the rasped Mandarin that still echoes in his ears. He thinks it should be different, now, but it’s not. Vaultie’s cloak flickers on. Charon watches the barely visible form turn around, reach out. His fingers find his arm, and tap there.

Charon settles his hand on top of Vaultie’s. Taps out an affirmative. _Go_. And then he rubs the pad of his thumb over Vaultie’s knuckles. Not a motion they’ve given any meaning to, but Vaultie stiffens under the touch and then pulls away, shy. Charon’s smile is slight, and easy.

They head out, together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is it; not the end of their journey, but at the least, the end of this part of their tale. I'm afraid you guys were thinking it would be a firefight in the end, but this was always just the tale of them. I hope everyone enjoyed. If possible, please leave a comment, a critique, whatever-- but I'd love one last hurrah from y'all. :') Because honestly people commenting, leaving kudos, saying such nice stuff in the bookmarks-- that kept me going. So thank you! And I hope you'll be reading more from me soon.


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